Antipsychotic therapy is the cornerstone of the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychoses. Although clinical guidelines tend to recommend the use of antipsychotics in monotherapy, combination of two or more antipsychotics (that is, polytherapy) is a common habit in clinical practice.

To assess differences in antipsychotic combination profile between patients with schizophrenia and patients with other psychoses.

A total of 241 patients (40.2% females, mean age 39.7+/−13.0 years) consecutively admitted during 2009 to a psychiatric inpatient ward with diagnosis of schizophrenia and other psychoses were assessed.

145 (60.2%) patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia while 96 patients (39.8%) were diagnosed with other psychoses (schizoaffective disorder n = 35, delusional disorder n = 8, schizophreniform disorder n = 8, brief psychotic disorder n = 13, psychotic disorder not otherwise specified n = 27, and other psychoses n = 5). Out of the total sample, polytherapy was used in 150 (62.2%) patients. A total of 100 (69.0%) patients with schizophrenia were on polytherapy, compared to 52.1% of those with other psychoses (p = 0.008). After controlling for age and gender, the association between a diagnosis of schizophrenia and being in polytherapy remained significant (p = 0.046).

Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are more prone to be in polytherapy than those with other psychoses.

Clinical trials (CT) are the main scientific support of the recommendations of pharmacological treatment of patients with schizophrenia. However, CT tend to strengthen the internal validity at the expense of external validity and the ability to generalize the results to the clinical population. For this reason, in recent years have developed large practical clinical trials that expand the inclusion criteria to incorporate as many real patients as possible. The first and most significant of these trials was the CATIE study (Lieberman et al, 2005).

To analyze eligibility for participation in CATIE of patients admitted during 2009 in a psychiatric inpatient unit with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

A total of 145 patients (27.6% females, mean age 39.6+/−12.8 years), consecutively admitted to an inpatient psychiatric ward with a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia were assessed to test if they would fulfill criteria for participation in CATIE.

60 (41.4%) patients did not fulfill CATIE inclusion criteria. Mental retardation (n = 22, p < 0.001), absence of informed consent (n = 15, p < 0.001) and refusal to take oral medication (n = 12, p < 0.001) were the main factors responsible for not meeting inclusion criteria.

Meeting the criteria was not significantly related to gender or specific diagnosis.

41.4% of patients admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit with a diagnosis of schizophrenia did not meet criteria for participation in the CATIE study.

Involuntary admission of mentally ill patients tends to be related to clinical severity and worst therapeutic response.

To evaluate whether there is a relationship between involuntary admission and prescription of two or more antipsychotics (that is, polytherapy) among patients with schizophrenia and other psychosis.

A total of 241 patients (40.2% females, mean age 39.7+/−13.0 years) consecutively admitted during 2009 to a psychiatric inpatient ward with diagnosis of schizophrenia and other psychoses were assessed.

Out of the total sample, 150 (62.2%) patients were on polytherapy, and of the 241 patients 134 (55.6%) were involuntarily admitted. Involuntary admission was unrelated to age (p = 0.335), specific diagnosis (p = 0.452), or length of psychosis (p = 0.234). On the contrary, it was related to gender (61.8% of males vs. 46.4% of females were involuntary, p = 0.018) and to polytherapy/monotherapy prescription (62.0% of patients on polytherapy vs. 45.1% of patients on monotherapy were involuntarily admitted; and 53.3% of voluntary patients vs. 69.4% of involuntary were on polytherapy p = 0.010). After controlling for age, gender, specific diagnosis and length of psychosis the association between involuntary admission and being in polytherapy remained significant (p = 0.047).

Patients involuntarily admitted are more prone to be on antipsychotic polytherapy.

Brain volume abnormalities and oxidative cell damage have been reported to be pathological characteristics of schizophrenia patients. This study aims to assess a potential relationship between these two characteristics in child and adolescent patients with first-episode psychosis.

26 child and adolescent patients with first-episode early-onset schizophrenia, and 78 age- and gender-matched healthy controls were assessed. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were used for volumetric measurements of five cerebral regions: gray matter of the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes, sulcal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and lateral ventricles. Oxidative cell damage was traced by means of a systemic increase in lipid hydroperoxides (LOOH).

Lateral ventricle volumes were significantly higher in schizophrenia patients than in controls. In schizophrenia patients, a significant positive relationship was found between oxidative cell damage (LOOH levels) and the abnormal enlargement of the lateral ventricles, after controlling for total intracranial volume, age, gender, daily smoking status, intelligence quotient (IQ), psychopathology, and time since onset of psychotic symptoms. No association was found between brain volumes and oxidative cell damage in control subjects.

Our results suggest that, in patients with first-episode early-onset schizophrenia, enlargement of the lateral ventricles is associated with chronic oxidative cell damage.

Early-onset psychosis (EOP) are a heterogeneous group, with high diagnostic stability for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in contrast to the lack of diagnostic stability of other EOP.

We recruited 24 adolescents consecutively admitted, who presented a first psychotic episode, in the adolescent psychiatric unit of the Gregorio Marañón General Hospital in Madrid, between May 2002 and May 2003, for a two year follow-up. Only one was lost at the two-year assessment.

Diagnosis of the psychotic disorders was assessed using the Kiddie-Sads-Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL).

The agreement between the baseline and the one-year follow-up diagnoses was 54.2%. Positive Predictive Value (PPV) was 100% for schizophrenia and depression with psychotic features, and 71.4% for bipolar disorder, while only 50.0% for schizo-affective disorder and 16.7% for psychosis NOS. From the one-year to the two-year follow-up, only one patient changed the diagnosis, so the agreement was 95.7%.

Eight patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia at the follow-up, but only four of them had received this diagnosis at the baseline assessment. The diagnosis of bipolar disorder was given at the follow-up to eight patients, from whom only four subjects received this diagnosis at baseline.

The results of the our longitudinal study on diagnostic stability support the Kraepelinean distinction between dementia praecox and manic-depressive psychosis.

To determine which factors are associated with compliance with outpatient follow-up plan of discharged patients from a psychiatric ward of a general hospital.

A sample of 120 patients consecutively admitted to a psychiatric general ward, and referred to an outpatient clinic after discharge formed the sample.

To explore the factors predicting whether patients attended or did not attend to the outpatient clinic, a logistic regression analysis was conducted.

After controlling for age, gender, and overall clinical case severity (assessed by the Severity Psychiatric Illness Scale), have been previously attended in the outpatient clinic was the only factor that predicted the compliance with post-discharge outpatient plan (as dichotomous variable: attended/not attended), Odds Ratio (OR) = 12.53, P=0.042. Overall clinical case severity did not predict attendance to the outpatient clinic after discharge, OR=0.937, P=0.452.

Patients who were attended in an outpatient clinic prior to admission had 12-fold more likely to adhere with post-discharge outpatient plan than patients who were not previously attended. This result highlights the importance of strengthening community-hospital liaison strategies.

To verify whether most compliant patients with outpatient postdischarge follow-up plan remain in the community longer before readmission than those who don't adhere to outpatient follow-up plan.

From a total of 120 consecutive admissions to a psychiatric general ward, 63 patients were consecutively readmitted along a 2 year period after their reference first admission.

Out of the 63 patients, 25 patients were attended in an Outpatient Unit (OU) previously to their re-admission (group A), whereas 38 patients had not been attended in the OU between reference admission and readmission (group B). Patient's socio-demographic data (age, gender, marital status, and years of education) were obtained and a case-mix scale (Severity Psychiatric Illness Scale) was administered. Length of survival in community of both groups was compared by means of Analysis of Covariance, controlled for gender, age, diagnosis, clinical severity and number of previous admissions.

Group A had a mean length of survival in the community of 47.7 days (SD=44.3). Group B had a mean length of survival in the community of 23.2 days (SD=37.9). This difference was statistically significant (F=4.74, df=6, 63, p=0.034).

Being attended by OU after the discharge of reference admission lengthen significantly survival in the community after controlling for gender, age, diagnosis, clinical severity and number of previous admissions. Further research will be conducted to determine the cause of the observed differences in patient attendance to post-discharge appointments.

Psychosis with onset prior to 18 years of age, or early-onset psychosis (EOP), have a poorer prognosis than adult-onset psychosis. Further, a worse functional outcome of patients with EOP has been related to diagnosis of schizophrenia, severity of negative symptoms, behavioral problems, premorbid functioning, childhood onset, and insidious onset. We aim to examine the functional outcome of patients with EOP over a two-year follow-up.

A total of 24 patients with first episode psychosis were enrolled. Subjects underwent a cross-sectional evaluation at the baseline visit that consisted of collecting sociodemographic data, including parental socioeconomic status as measured by the Hollingshead-Redlich Scale. Psychotic symptoms were assessed using the Spanish version of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Social disability was measured with the Global Assessment of Functioning disability scale (GAF). Patients were assessed at a two-year follow-up. A linear regression analysis was used to predict the level of functioning (based on GAF scores) over the two-year follow-up. Variables entered into this equation were: GAF at two-year follow-up (as dependent variable), and gender, age at first onset, parental socioeconomic status, diagnosis, positive symptoms at baseline, and negative symptoms at baseline (as independent variables).

Negative symptoms at baseline were the only significant variable that predict the functional outcome at the two-year follow-up (p= 0.010).

Functional prognosis of early-onset psychosis depends on the severity of negative symptoms, independently of diagnosis.

To determine the change in prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in victims of the March 11 attacks and their relatives, 1 and 6 months after the attacks.

Evaluation of PTSD symptoms using the Davidson Trauma Scale (DTS) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) in a sample of 56 patients admitted to an emergency room of a general hospital, and assessment of PTSD symptoms in relatives of the patients.

At Month 1, 41.1% of patients (31.3% of males and 54.2% of females) presented with PTSD. At Month 6, this figure was 40.9% (30.4% of males and 52.4% of females). There was a significant improvement in perception of health among females between Month 1 and Month 6. Relatives presented similar DTS scores at baseline and at 6 months.

We verified that rates of PTSD did not vary substantively between the two evaluations. PTSD symptoms positively correlated with psychological health involvement. This correlation points out that both PTSD symptoms and subjective general health involvement are part of the psychological response to trauma.

The prevalence of PTSD symptoms was high and remained stable between Month 1 and Month 6, while subjective perception of health improved significantly.

Pharmacological treatment of patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses get scientific backing of its main clinical trials. Methodological guarantees these test tend to strengthen the internal validity of the results at the expense of external validity and the ability to generalize the results to the clinical population. For this reason, and to minimize the shortcomings of external validity while maintaining internal validity, has been promoted in recent years to carry out large clinical trials based on clinical practice. This type of test expands the criteria for inclusion, limiting the exclusion criteria to incorporate as many patients as possible. The first and most significant of these trials was the CATIE trial (Lieberman et al, 2005).

Discuss eligibility patients admitted during the year 2009 in a psychiatric inpatient unit with a diagnosis of schizophrenia for participation in CATIE.

A total of 145 patients (27.6% females, mean age 39.6+/−12.8 years), consecutively admitted to an inpatient psychiatric ward with a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia or other psychoses were assessed to test if they would fulfill criteria for participation in CATIE.

60 (41.4%) patients did not fulfill CATIE inclusion criteria. Mental retardation (n = 22, p < 0.001), absence of consent (n = 15, p < 0.001) and refusal to take oral medication (n = 12, p < 0.001) were the main factors responsible for not meeting criteria. Meeting the criteria was not significantly related to gender or specific diagnosis.

The 41.38% of patients did not meet criteria for participation in the CATIE study.

Previous studies have reported progressive brain changes and cognitive deficits in early-onset psychosis (EOP). Little is known on the relationship between longitudinal changes in brain structure and neurocognition.

Naturalistic 5-year prospective study comparing frontal gray matter (GM) volume and executive functions in adolescents with a first episode of EOP and a sample of healthy controls at baseline, 2-year and 5-year follow-up.

Thirty-six patients (age at baseline 15.8 ±.7, 66.6% male) and 34 controls (15.4±1.4, 55.9% male) comprised the study sample. Both patients and controls presented with frontal GM loss during the first five years of follow-up. During the first two years, patients presented with significantly greater GM loss than controls in the left (F=9.642, p=0.003) and right frontal lobe (F=7.585, p=0.008), with no significant differences between year 2 and 5. Patients with EOP performed significantly worse in executive tasks than controls in all visits. During the first two years of follow-up, controls, but not patients, presented with a significant improvement in executive functioning (F=7.523, p=0.009), with similar evolution of cognitive functioning between years 2 and 5 in both groups (F=0.908, p=0.346). Changes in frontal GM volume and executive functioning were not significantly correlated within the entire follow-up period.

Over the first two years of illness, patients with EOP show greater frontal GM loss and less improvement in executive functions than expected. This could be a critical period for the development of deficits in EOP, in which more intensive interventions would be warranted.

Early-onset first-episode psychosis (FEP) and high functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are complex neuro–developmental disorders that share symptomatology but it is not clear if they also share neurobiological abnormalities (Chisholm et al., 2015). We examined thickness, surface area and volume in a direct comparison of children and adolescents with FEP (onset before 18 years), high-functioning ASD, and healthy subjects.

Magnetic resonance imaging scans of 85 participants (30 ASD, 29 FEP, 26 healthy controls, age range 10–18 years) were obtained from the same MR scanner using the same acquisition protocol. The FreeSurfer analysis suite was used to quantify vertex-wise estimates of the metrics thickness, surface area, and volume.

ASD and FEP had spatially overlapping insular deficits for each metric. The transdiagnostic overlap of deficits was greatest for volume (55% of all insular vertices) and smallest for thickness (18%). Insular thickness and surface area deficits did not overlap in ASD and overlapped only in 8% of all insular vertices in FEP.

Morphological insular deficits are common to FEP and high functioning ASD when compared to healthy participants. The pattern of deficits was similar in both disorders, i.e. a largely non-overlap of insular thickness and surface area. The non-overlap provides further evidence that these metrics represent two independent outcomes of corticogenesis, both of which are affected in FEP and ASD.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Previous reviews suggest there is minimal evidence for an association between duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) and neurocognition. This is based on tallied findings of studies with small samples and neurocognition viewed as a single construct. We aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis examining the association between DUP and individual neurocognitive domains and tests in first-episode psychosis (FEP).

MOOSE and PRISMA guidelines were followed. Forty-three studies involving 4647 FEP patients were included. For studies providing correlations between DUP and neurocognition, 12 separate meta-analyses were performed based on neurocognitive domains/indices. The influence of demographic/clinical variables was tested using weighted linear meta-regression analyses.

The relationship between DUP and most neurocognitive domains/indices was not significant. Longer DUP was associated with a larger cognitive deterioration index, i.e. current minus premorbid intellectual functioning (N = 4; mean ES −0.213, 95% confidence interval (CI) (−0.344 to −0.074), p = 0.003). Findings were homogeneous, with no evidence of publication bias or significant influence from moderators. For studies providing mean and standard deviations for neurocognitive measures and DUP, 20 meta-regressions were performed on individual neurocognitive tests. One significant finding emerged showing that longer DUP was associated with fewer Wisconsin Card Sorting Test-perseverative errors (mean ES −0.031, 95% CI (−0.048 to −0.013), p < 0.001). Exploratory meta-regressions in studies with mean DUP <360 days showed longer DUP was significantly associated with poorer performance on Trail Making Test A and B and higher Full-Scale IQ.

There may not be a generalised association between DUP and neurocognition, however, specific cognitive functions may be associated with longer DUP or delayed help-seeking.

The correlates of insight in early-onset psychosis have received little previous attention.

We studied clinical correlates of insight in a sample of 110 adolescent recent-onset psychosis patients (mean age 15.53 years; psychotic symptoms present for <6 months). Insight was measured with the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder (SUMD) at baseline, 6 months and 12 months follow-up.

Insight improved over the early phases of the illness, in parallel with psychopathological improvement. Poor insight at baseline and 6 months correlated with poor functioning at 6 and 12 months respectively. Schizophrenia patients had poorer insight than patients with bipolar disorder at 6 and 12 months but not at baseline. Logistic and linear regressions were used to predict 12-month diagnoses and functioning based on insight measurements. Baseline awareness of illness was a significant predictor for diagnosis [odds ratio (OR) 1.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.05–1.97]. Treatment compliance at 6 months did not correlate with baseline SUMD subscores, but correlated with insight into having a disorder (Spearman's ρ=0.21, p=0.039), its consequences (Spearman's ρ=0.28, p=0.006) and the need for treatment (Spearman's ρ=0.26, p=0.012) at 6 months. The ‘attribution of symptoms’ dimension of insight is poorly correlated with other insight dimensions and with other clinical variables.

Poor insight correlates with symptom severity and global functioning but also has some trait value for schizophrenia, which is apparent once acute psychotic symptomatology is not prominent. A multi-dimensional approach to the assessment of insight is necessary, as different dimensions are influenced by different factors.