Peer victimization predicts the development of mental health symptoms in the transition to adolescence, but it is unclear whether and how parents and school environments can buffer this link.

We analyzed two-year longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, involving a diverse sample of 11 844 children across the United States (average at baseline = 9.91 years; standard deviation = 0.63; range = 8.92–11.08; complete case sample = 8385). Longitudinal associations between peer victimization and two-year changes in mental health symptoms of major depression disorder (MDD), separation anxiety (SA), prodromal psychosis (PP), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were examined including a wide range of covariates. Mixed linear models were used to test for the moderating effects of parental warmth and prosocial school environment.

20% of children experienced peer victimization. Higher exposure to peer victimization was associated with increases in MDD, SA, and ADHD symptoms. Parental warmth was associated with decreases in MDD symptoms but did not robustly buffer the link between peer victimization and mental health symptoms. Prosocial school environment predicted decreases in PP symptoms and buffered the link between peer victimization and MDD symptoms but amplified the link between peer victimization and SA and ADHD symptoms.

Peer victimization is associated with increases in mental health symptoms during the transition to adolescence. Parental warmth and prosocial school environments might not be enough to counter the negative consequences of peer victimization on all mental health outcomes.

The prevalence of medical illnesses is high among patients with psychiatric disorders. The current study aimed to investigate multi-comorbidity in patients with psychiatric disorders in comparison to the general population. Secondary aims were to investigate factors associated with metabolic syndrome and treatment appropriateness of mental disorders.

The sample included 54,826 subjects (64.73% females; 34.15% males; 1.11% nonbinary gender) from 40 countries (COMET-G study). The analysis was based on the registration of previous history that could serve as a fair approximation for the lifetime prevalence of various medical conditions.

About 24.5% reported a history of somatic and 26.14% of mental disorders. Mental disorders were by far the most prevalent group of medical conditions. Comorbidity of any somatic with any mental disorder was reported by 8.21%. One-third to almost two-thirds of somatic patients were also suffering from a mental disorder depending on the severity and multicomorbidity. Bipolar and psychotic patients and to a lesser extent depressives, manifested an earlier (15–20 years) manifestation of somatic multicomorbidity, severe disability, and probably earlier death. The overwhelming majority of patients with mental disorders were not receiving treatment or were being treated in a way that was not recommended. Antipsychotics and antidepressants were not related to the development of metabolic syndrome.

The finding that one-third to almost two-thirds of somatic patients also suffered from a mental disorder strongly suggests that psychiatry is the field with the most trans-specialty and interdisciplinary value and application points to the importance of teaching psychiatry and mental health in medical schools and also to the need for more technocratically oriented training of psychiatric residents.

Hyperthyroidism due to Graves-Basedow disease is a common cause of neuropsychiatric manifestations, such as anxiety, psychomotor restlessness, mood disturbances, insomnia and psychosis. Hashimoto’s encephalopathy rarely occurs in so-called autoimmune thyroiditis, which can present with hyperthyroidism and neuropsychiatric symptoms similar to Graves’ disease. We add that the mystical-religious beliefs, present in all human cultures, and decisive in the case at hand, make us propose an evolutionary origin of them.

Clinical case description

A clinical case based on medical reports is described

We present the case of a 72-year-old woman, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, well adapted to the Community. Known history of elevated antithyroid antibodies since 2019, brought to the emergency room involuntarily due to a mystical-religious delusional condition associated with behavioral disturbance. On examination, cachectic appearance, distal tremor, emotional exaltation and megalomanic speech were highlighted. Laboratory tests revealed primary hyperthyroidism with elevated antibodies. During admission, the differential diagnosis between Graves-Basedow disease and Hashimoto’s encephalopathy was considered. Thyroid scintigraphy oriented the diagnosis to Graves-Basedow disease, not requiring lumbar puncture or corticosteroid treatment. Treatment was based on high-dose antithyroid and antipsychotic drugs, with clinical and analytical remission at 3 weeks. The patient was referred to a Social Health Center for functional recovery. The family refers to a similar episode in 2014, of less intensity and self-limited, which is proposed to be a hashitoxicosis.

Differential diagnosis between Graves-Basedow and Hashimoto disease is essential as they differ in treatment and prognosis. The continuity that the delusion presents with the previous beliefs of the patient, differing mainly in the affective-behavioral implication, makes us consider a predisposition to psychosis in our patient. Religiosity can be adaptive in certain environments, since mystical beliefs have existed throughout the history of the human species and seem to be part of our nature.

None Declared

Chronic psychiatric patients admitted to subacute and long-stay hospital units are especially vulnerable to the situation of confinement due to the pandemic. Throughout 2020 and 2021 they have suffered the consequences of multiple strict confinements given the differences in isolation protocols in hospitalized patients compared to the general population. This has repercussions on the increase in anxious symptomatology, which influences a more torpid and prolonged evolution of mental disorders in this subpopulation.

The objective of this study is to study the anxiety levels of patients admitted to a sub-acute and long-stay mental health unit in a situation of confinement due to covid-19.

We have carried out a cross-sectional descriptive observational study in 25 patients admitted to the subacute and long-stay unit of the Barcelona Forum Center between December 8 and 23, 2021 in the context of confinement due to a covid-19 outbreak. Sociodemographic and clinical variables are collected. We have used the self-administered STAI scale to assess clinical anxiety.

The mean age is 47.7 years; women 60%. 80% with single marital status. 90% of the patients presented active tobacco consumption, with an average of 21.2 cigarettes/day. The mean score on the STAI scale was 58.8 for state anxiety and 46.7 for trait anxiety, both levels above the 75th percentile for adults, both men (state anxiety 28, trait anxiety 25) and women (state anxiety 31, trait anxiety 32).

The state and trait anxiety scores of the STAI scale of hospitalized patients are higher than the average of the general population, which could be due to the situation of confinement due to the covid pandemic.

None Declared

Obesity is highly prevalent and disabling, especially in individuals with severe mental illness including bipolar disorders (BD). The brain is a target organ for both obesity and BD. Yet, we do not understand how cortical brain alterations in BD and obesity interact.

We obtained body mass index (BMI) and MRI-derived regional cortical thickness, surface area from 1231 BD and 1601 control individuals from 13 countries within the ENIGMA-BD Working Group. We jointly modeled the statistical effects of BD and BMI on brain structure using mixed effects and tested for interaction and mediation. We also investigated the impact of medications on the BMI-related associations.

BMI and BD additively impacted the structure of many of the same brain regions. Both BMI and BD were negatively associated with cortical thickness, but not surface area. In most regions the number of jointly used psychiatric medication classes remained associated with lower cortical thickness when controlling for BMI. In a single region, fusiform gyrus, about a third of the negative association between number of jointly used psychiatric medications and cortical thickness was mediated by association between the number of medications and higher BMI.

We confirmed consistent associations between higher BMI and lower cortical thickness, but not surface area, across the cerebral mantle, in regions which were also associated with BD. Higher BMI in people with BD indicated more pronounced brain alterations. BMI is important for understanding the neuroanatomical changes in BD and the effects of psychiatric medications on the brain.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective and safe medical procedure that mainly indicated for depression, but is also indicated for patients with other conditions. However, ECT is among the most stigmatized and controversial treatments in medicine. Our objective was to examine social media contents on Twitter related to ECT to identify and evaluate public views on the matter.

We collected Twitter posts in English and Spanish mentioning ECT between January 1, 2019 and October 31, 2020. Identified tweets were subject to a mixed method quantitative–qualitative content and sentiment analysis combining manual and semi-supervised natural language processing machine-learning analyses. Such analyses identified the distribution of tweets, their public interest (retweets and likes per tweet), and sentiment for the observed different categories of Twitter users and contents.

“Healthcare providers” users produced more tweets (25%) than “people with lived experience” and their “relatives” (including family members and close friends or acquaintances) (10% combined), and were the main publishers of “medical” content (mostly related to ECT’s main indications). However, more than half of the total tweets had “joke or trivializing” contents, and such had a higher like and retweet ratio. Among those tweets manifesting personal opinions on ECT, around 75% of them had a negative sentiment.

Mixed method analysis of social media contents on Twitter offers a novel perspective to examine public opinion on ECT, and our results show attitudes more negative than those reflected in studies using surveys and other traditional methods.

To estimate the prevalence and socio-economic inequalities in adequate consumption of fruits and vegetables in Peru between 2014 and 2019.

Analytical cross-sectional study. The outcome variable was adequate consumption of fruits and vegetables, defined as the consumption of five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per d (yes/no). We used concentration curves and Erreygers concentration index to describe socio-economic inequalities and a microeconometric approach to determine the contribution of each variable to inequality.

Peru.

Data from Peruvians aged 18 years or older collected by the Demographic and Family Health Survey.

The prevalence of adequate fruit and vegetable consumption did not change between 2014 (10·7 %; 95 % CI (10·0, 11·4)) and 2019 (11 %; 95 % CI (10·4, 11·7)). We found socio-economic inequalities in the adequate consumption of fruits and vegetables, with wealthier individuals having a higher prevalence of adequate consumption compared to poorer individuals in 2014 (19·2 % v. 3·5 %) and 2019 (18·6 % v. 4·7 %). The decomposition analysis found that education, urban areas and being wealthy were the main factors associated with socio-economic inequality in adequate fruit and vegetable consumption, being structural problems of society.

Despite the current regulations on healthy eating in Peru, adequate consumption of fruits and vegetables remains low, and there are socio-economic inequalities between the poorest and wealthiest individuals. Our findings suggest that more efforts are needed to increase the intake and assess the disparities in adequate fruit and vegetable consumption.

Following the mentalization of interpersonal relations can be improved through reading for which the influence of literary fiction can also serve as a model. Schizophrenia is characterized by extensive deficits in mentalization, and the amelioration of these impairments is a major focus in psychosocial treatment research. Reading literature can be a potential tool in improving mentalizing skills.

We aimed to examine and compare healthy participants with patients living with schizophrenia, focusing on measuring mentalizing skills and the impact of reading literary fiction on their mentalization skills.

47 persons with schizophrenia in remission and 48 healthy controls were assessed and compared with Short Story Task (SST) a new measurement of ToM. SST proved to be a sensitive tool, to individual differences. After reading the short story “The End of Something” (Hemingway) a structured interview was done with 14 questions.

We found that patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse in their ToM scores compared to healthy controls (ANOVA test, p<0,05 ). Previous reading experiences correlated significantly with mentalizing scores not just in healthy controls (Independent Samples T-test, p<0,05) but also in patients with schizophrenia. ToM scores were twice as high among those who had prior reading experiences in the schizophrenia group ((MS= 3,91, SD=3,166, M=8,08, SD=4,542; p<0,05, t=-3,509).

We found that mentalization skills could be improved by regular reading. Our results could also be influenced by several other factors such as empathy skills, identification with the characters etc. Our results and conclusions are in line with the results of international research on this topic.

No significant relationships.

Previous research highlighted that adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are four times as vulnerable to suicidal behavior as the healthy population. Maladaptive perfectionism is also viewed as an important risk factor for suicide. Yet, there are no studies which focused on the relationship between perfectionism and suicide among adolescents with ADHD.

The objective of the present study was to explore if perfectionism may be a risk factor for suicidal behavior in adolescents with ADHD.

The clinical group was recruited from outpatient clinics, while the non-clinical group was recruited from high schools around Hungary. The clinical group’s inclusion criterion was ADHD diagnoses, while the non-clinical group required the absence of any current or past psychiatric treatment or diagnoses.

In the ADHD group 88 adolescents participated, and 96 adolescents participated in the non-clinical group. There was no difference regarding the level of perfectionism in the groups, except one dimension of perfectionism, which is ‘Organization’. The ADHD group had significantly higher level of suicidal behavior than the control group ((χ2 (1) = 11.222, p < .001, V = 0.25). Among the ADHD group adaptive perfectionism was significantly negatively correlated with suicidal behaviour.

Adolescents with ADHD did not have a different level of perfectionism than the healthy control group only in ‘Organization’ trait. This result could add to the therapeutic work with adolescents diagnosed with ADHD with underlining the importance to focus on organizational skills. The result highlights that adaptive perfectionism appears to be a protective factor against suicidality.

No significant relationships.