News: Advocacy loses a pioneer: Gwill York Newman, 1932-2010
After her son was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Gwill Newman became a fierce advocate as well as donor for research about the brain. . .
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News: New psychiatric drugs in pipeline
PhRMA has released a report of more than 300 drugs in the pipeline for psychiatric medications. Many are in the initial stages. Some, such as Johnson and Johnson's . . .
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News: Eve Oliphant, Cal. activist, died in Calif.
Eve Oliphant, pioneer of family support and advocacy, died in northern Cal. two weeks shy of her 90th birthday. She had been ill with leukemia. Oliphant is a subject of the recently released PBS documentary. . .
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News: Schizophrenia and aspirin
Research from the Netherlands suggests aspirin might not just be for headaches anymore. PsychCentral reviewed an article published in the June issue of Journal of Clinical Psychiatry with promising findings. . .
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News: Exercise and schizophrenia

News: FDA says Pfizer study overdosed kids

News: NARSAD seminars launched for 2010

Book Reviews: Schizophrenia: Cognitive Theory, Research and Therapy, by Aaron T. Beck, Neil A. Rector, Neal Stolar, and Paul Grant
Thirty years of research and clinical know-how frame the techniques and theories of cognitive behavioral therapy. In a review of Schizophrenia: Cognitive Theory, Research and Therapy, Dr. Richard Evans explains how reading this book can be applied to treating people with schizophrenia.
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News: Move over Zyprexa, Seroquel, trial on Risperdal

Consider This: A trial, and an ad, featuring Seroquel
. . .evidence vs. spin
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News: Architecture of genetic risk for schizophrenia

News: Review of psycho-social interventions for schizophrenia

News: Psychosis and understanding risk
Understanding psychosis for risk, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders is not as straightforward as it was once thought to be. . .
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News: Stimulus money prompts schizophrenia research

News: Safety of atypical antipsychotics
Atypical antipsychotic drugs are used widely beyond the original group of mental disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which they were initially approved.
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News: Underused drug may be the safest for schizophrenia

News: Living Independently with schizophrenia
More Swedes with schizophrenia live independently than New Yorkers with nearly identical characteristics. . .
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News: Stigma starts early in childhood
Children believe if someone tries hard enough, he or she can overcome ADHD or depression, suggest authors. . .
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News: Schizophrenia's genetic puzzle

Did You Know: Four in ten people with schizophrenia say they have gotten no treatment in the previous 6 - 12 months.
Read more about this in Schizophrenia Bulletin...
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News: Cancer deaths high in schizophrenia
After suicide, cancer is the second leading cause of death for people with schizophrenia, noted French researchers. . .
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News: Schizophrenia under treated
People with schizophrenia suffer inconsistent services, deficient treatments, and a shortage of them. . .
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Consider This: Should the term schizophrenia be changed?
. . .take a poll
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Track Legislation: Stabenow introduces bill (S1136) to close treatment gap
Michigan's Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) introduced a bill to open the door for seriously mentally ill people, now receiving Medicaid, to get comprehensive care in 10 participating states. The Mental Illness Chronic Care Improvement Act (S 1136) is a demonstration program with the potential to close a treatment gap by linking to primary care. Diabetes and heart disease are among the chronic conditions afflicting people with a mental illness and shortening life and Stabenow's proposal recognizes the existing system has...
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News: Women's mental health patterns
Anxiety disorders, phobias and major depressions are more common in women than men according to a report from the Office on Women's Health. And while it has long been said that schizophrenia was a male disease, the rates are actually fairly close (1.26 percent for males compared to 1.0 percent for women), in comparison to PTSD, which appears to be twice as common in women and prevalent in women vets. The findings are part of a more intense effort to...
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News: Personal narratives of recovery and activism
Three engaging, powerful, personal narratives about managing with a mental illness are available. In the May-June issue of Health Affairs, television news personality Jane Pauley discusses her bipolar disorder, diagnosed when she was 50. And Fred Frese, former president of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and a psychologist who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1966, calls for mental health professionals to come out of the closet. His remarks are also available in a webcam of the Health Affairs conference....
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News: Cannabis and schizophrenia
Evidence indicates a relationship between marijuana use and later schizophrenia. Should this be a factor in debates about legalizing marijuana?(online surveys) Smoking marijuana (cannabis), an icon of the bandana-wearing flower-child generation, is a subject of ongoing medical debate and a ballot measure in many states. Is cannabis use harmless recreation, a medical necessity for end-of-life pain, or a disorder contributing to psychosis and associated with schizophrenia? Perhaps all three? It is the latter question that engaged a team of...
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Book Reviews: My Son's Name Was Fred, by Gwill Linderme York Newman

News: The Soloist: music, mental illness and a respectful relationship
The Soloist, a film starring Hollywood notables Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr., opens this week based on a book (same title). It portrays the relationship between a gifted musician, Nathaniel Ayers, living on Skid Row after he career was cut short by schizophrenia, and an LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez, who is moved by his music. Within hours of its delayed release (originally slated for Nov.), Entertainment Weekly was predicting a box-office hit, a contender for number one take...
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Did You Know: Schizophrenia is more common than Alzheimer's.
Read more from the Merck Manual....
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Commentary: Making a difference: "The Soloist" and Steve Lopez

News: Recovery in schizophrenia
For many years doctors said there was no recovery from schizophrenia and the best that could be hoped for was reducing symptoms. No more. The March issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin is devoted to "Functional Recovery in Schizophrenia." Four articles, written by authors from different academic centers, discuss the theme of "multiple elements of recovery" including how to measure functional recovery, how it differs from remission of clinical symptoms, and implications for early detection of psychosis. The Schizophrenia Bulleting is free...
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News: Schizophrenia's symptoms
Is schizophrenia a systemic disease? Dr. Brian Kirkpatrick poses this question in an article published in Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin. The answer, Kirkpatrick says, has implications for clinical care as well as future research....
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News: Mental illness does not predict violence
A new study concludes that mental illness alone does not predict violence. For the past two decades, debate about a putative link between mental illness and violence has been heated with implications for policy, treatment and legal decisions. The authors of this study, published in Archives of General Psychiatry, interviewed 34,500 people in a national sample who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and major depression. Their findings, based on interviews roughly 3 years apart, indicate that of the numerous...
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Film: "Take These Broken Wings"

News: Martin Ramirez art exhibit in New York
The work of Martin Ramirez who was hospitalized for 30 years with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, is on display at the American Museum of Folk Art, in New York. Ramirez died in 1963 and spent the last 15 years of his life in DeWitt State Hospital, a military barracks in California that was converted into a psychiatric hospital after World War II. It was one of the hospitals singled out for over-crowding and for poor standards of care in the...
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News: Recovery concepts for schizophrenia
Researchers from The Netherlands discuss concepts and measurement for recovery in "Clinical Recovery in First-Episode Psychosis." The research appears on-line in the free edition of Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin. Authors emphasize how different participants view the process, and differentiate between functional and symptomatic recovery....
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News: Measuring recovery from psychotic illness
As recovery is being realized by more and more, it's apparent than some people can manage a functional recovery despite lingering symptoms. And that remission of symptoms does not always improve function. In an attempt to create a scale to measure functional recovery, authors of an article in Schizophrenia Bulletin (Advance Access) encountered unanticipated issues for predicting real world situations....
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News: In the journals. . .focus on youth
From the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine: In the 1960s an anti-war poster read, "War is not healthy for children or other living things." A study in the Nov. issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine confirmed this sentiment with a study of 169 families: "Children age 3 and older who had a deployed parent had significantly higher scores on measures of externalizing and overall behavior problems than children of the same age without a deployed parent."...
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News: New books about bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia
Two books have been published this month for an audience concerned about mental illness in their families. Author Michael Greenberg writes about his daughter and her hospitalizations, starting as a teenager, when she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Greenberg's discussed Hurry Down Sunshine, with radio host Lenny Lopate on WNYC. Researchers at New York State's Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Irene and Jerome Levine, wrote a book they hope will debunk myths and explain current research and treatments....
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News: Antipsychotic meds and heart disease
An NIMH study (n=1125) comparing antipsychotic medications and cardiac heart disease found the "risk for CHD differed significantly among the medications." Risk, marked by elevated cholesterol, was highest for those taking olanzapine (Zyprexa, Zydis) and quetiapine (Seroquel). A decreased risk was noted for those taking risperidone (Risperdal) and ziprasidone (Geodon). Cardiovascular disease is a contributing factor to the shorter life span of people diagnosed with schizophrenia....
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News: Psychiatrist explains brain research
In an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Nancy Andreasen discusses 30 years of research about the brain, including normal function, changes due to age, and mental illness and medication...
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News: Seroquel update from FDA
Seroquel appears on the FDA's list of drugs with serious risks that were compiled by the Adverse Event Report System between Jan-March 2008. The FDA warning attributed labeling confusion on sample packs to overdoses. Seroquel is made by AstraZeneca and is a mood stabilizer prescribed for bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia....
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News: Schizophrenia and childhood bedwetting
The part of the brain linked to bed wetting appears to be the same part associated with language fluency and processing information, language fluency and schizophrenia. Research scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health were helped with MRI brain scans to pinpoint the brain's gray matter where these are located (red section). Findings appear in the September issue of Brain....
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News: Recognizing a dual diagnosis
National Public Radio reporter Farai Chideya explored difficulties people have recognizing co-occurring substance abuse and a psychiatric disorders, and then of finding appropriate treatment that does not ignore one component of this tricky but common condition. In a 10-minute interview, she spoke with a consumer, now in recovery, who has become a peer counselor in a Los Angeles program, and Dr. Robert Drake, a psychiatrist at Dartmouth Medical School....
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News: Schizophrenia, voices and recovery
Dr. Benjamin Gray, an English mental health professional, didn't truly appreciate what hearing voices meant until after his own hospitalization, one decade into his career. In the on-line Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin (subscription required) Gray describes how acceptance of the narrative behind voices plays a role in treating a person's core experiences rather than a diagnostic category....
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News: Elements of creativity
How much does creativity owe to psychopathology? Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin (subscription required) reports on an empirical study by Australian researchers who analyze this question for a sample of artists (n=100) using a battery of self-administered questionnaires....
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Consider This: When the press gets it right. . .
Three items of note
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News: Is schizophrenia incompatible with self-representation?
Last week the Supreme Court handed down a decision that a man with schizophrenia did not have the right to represent himself in court without an attorney. Indiana v. Edwards raises questions about whether the legal standard conferring competence to stand trial differs from competence to represent oneself. The 7-to-2 opinion upheld an Indiana's judge's decision not to allow Ahmed Edwards to conduct his own self-defense. Edwards spent three years in the hospital before he was deemed competent to stand...
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News: Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder-shared qualities
An article in Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin discusses neurobiology and genetic studies about overlapping etiologic determinants" in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. (Abstract available; full text requires subscription.)...
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News: Psychiatric disorders at Guantanamo
A report released from Human Rights Watch, Locked Up Alone indicates that many of the prisoners at Guantanamo have developed psychiatric symptoms of a thought disorders such as schizophrenia (hallucinations, voices, self-mutilation), or anxiety, PTSD, depression which have led to suicide attempts during their detainment. The YouTube video shows a supervised press visit in March....
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News: Schizophrenia: spontaneous mutations or heredity?
Research sponsored by NIMH indicates spontaneous genetic mutations can lead to vulnerabilities for schizophrenia. Previously attention weighed heavily on inherited genes. Patterns of spontaneous mutations were recently reported in cases of autism....
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Consider This: About the APA
Highlights. . .
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News: Impact of work programs
A six-country international study (n= 312) evaluated work programs and subsequent clinical and social functioning for people with schizophrenia and depression using a battery of standard evaluations. An abstract is available online in Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin....
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Commentary: Home genetic tests: science or marketing?


With daily updates about genetics, the direct-to-consumer marketing of testing kits is proliferating. Whom do these kits serve? asks Laura Hercher.


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News: Many genes cause schziophrenia
Two teams of research scientists have each concluded that schizophrenia is caused by ”hundreds of genes” which have anomalies creating complex pathways. The research was reported online in Science. Schizophrenia occurs in one percent of the population....
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News: Decriminalizing marijuana
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) intends to introduce a federal bill decriminalizing marijuana. While some view this as exciting news, the evidence linking marijuana addiction to the onset of psychosis and as a trigger for schizophrenia, along with the clinical impact of withdrawal of this highly addictive agent, should be part of any conversation. He followed his announcement on the Bill Maher show, with a press release today....
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News: Schizophrenia studies
The March issue of Psychiatric Services (subscription required) focuses on schizophrenia, including research on antipsychotic drugs, the responsibilities of siblings who increasingly fill a void left by parents, and for the over-55 group which is expected to double in the next twenty years....
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News: Prenatal schizophrenia risk
Research from Denmark suggests that during pregnancy, first-trimester trauma as experienced in war, feminine, or stress, such as the death of a close relative, affect neurodevelopment. Based on a sample of mothers who gave birth to 1.38 million babies between 1973 and 1995, these factors led to an increased risk for schizophrenia. The report appeared in the February edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry....
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News: Purpose and recovery
Charles Barber, on the faculty of Yale University, writes about the social context for recovery and points to his own experiences in “a life that had been reconfigured by illness.” Follow-up conversation appears in The Washington Post....
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News: Childhood schizophrenia
January’s issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin contains a (free) article about the treatment of early onset schizophrenia for children and adolescents, including use of second-generation antipsychotic medication, side effects, a synopsis of published studies, and research gaps. Other articles in this issue (subscription required) focus on brain development, cognitive deficits, and neuroimaging....
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News: Overlap challenges dichotomy
Pointing to growing evidence about genetics, metabolism, cognitive function and imaging, an article in the December issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin (subscription required) challenges the historic dichotomy between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This updates an article by the same author which MIWatch originally posted (May) from Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin. Related PET scans/ MRIs used diagnostically...
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News: Tobacco industry creates "self-medicating" rationale
An outstanding article in Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access exposes the tobacco industry's aggressive tactics to market smoking to people with schizophrenia. This includes the creation of the "self-medicating hypothesis" and in 1997 the formation of an R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company subsidiary, Targacept, a biopharmaceutical company. The authors say the industry's success came from "suppressing research that does not support their position, and disseminating their data and interpretations to the lay press and policy makers" including family advocacy groups. They...
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News: China treats mental illness with surgery
The Wall Street Journal reports that in China some doctors routinely perform surgery on people suffering from schizophrenia or depression, a practice abhorrent in the West. The procedure destroys part of the brain and while doctors claim improvement more than 90 percent of the time, families see failures and new disabilities, and they are fighting back. In 2004, China banned similar procedures, called “ablative” surgery, for drug addiction....
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Commentary: Complex PTSD
by Julian Ford, Ph.D.

Stories about PTSD have become a daily occurrence as a result of conditions of combat in war zones. Now Complex PTSD -- resulting from early life trauma -- is being recognized for its profound effects leading to problems with emotional and physical growth. Noted expert Dr. Julian Ford discusses some of the earmarks of Complex PTSD, how it differs from PTSD, and why clinicians are taking note.
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News: Promising drug enhances cognition
A review article in Schizophrenia Bulletin (subscription required) reports modifinal, a wake-promoting agent, has shown promising results for its ability "to improve cognition in schizophrenia" The impact on cognition was originally noted in healthy volunteers leading to further study in people where cognitive deficits lead to long term disabilities. According to the authors, it also has "a strikingly similar pattern of cognitive changes in a group of adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)."...
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News: Heart disease killing people with mental illness
An editorial in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) sounds a wake up call to the medical community to address the shortened life span of untreated cardiovascular disease for people with a mental illness. On average their life-span is 25 years shorter, and the authors go beyond explaining this disparity with diet and smoking (people with mental illness consume about half of the cigarettes sold in the United States). They urge psychiatrists to begin monitoring cholesterol, blood pressure, and...
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News: Individually tailored follow-up
Schizophrenia Bulletin (advance online, requires subscription) reports a promising study (N=95) from Austin, Texas, indicating “individually tailored environmental support” was most likely to improve functional outcomes and medication adherence, although statistically significant differences diminished at six months....
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News: When a parent has a mental illness
Children with a mentally ill parent is not just a topic for feature films such as Canvas, but one that is beginning to receive attention with new books and an article in the Sept-Oct. issue of Social Work Today. Concrete ideas for answering questions, creating an accepting environment, and tools for helping youngsters who may feel a stigma, are enumerated....
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Consider This: "Canvas:" A family portrait
by Phyllis Vine
"Canvas" is an honest and textured portrayal of an ordinary family managing the uncertainties schizophrenia brings to their lives. Marcia Gay Harden (Mary), Joe Pantoliano (John) and Devon Gearhart (Chris) give stunning performances of living on the margin of Mary's illness and hospitalizations while they face an uncertain future. Writer and director Joseph Greco writes without sensationalizing a painful story.

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News: Early detection of psychosis
In an effort to speed treatment for a first psychotic episode, researchers in Norway and Denmark assessed the impact of a public information campaign about symptoms. An article in Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access (September 28) reports how multifaceted advertising -- television, newspapers, brochures, posters, lectures, videos and outreach to general practitioners -- educated the public. Students and teachers were a priority and every school in Norway was visited. "The main objective of this campaign was to provide knowledge about psychosis...
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News: Crisis in global mental health
Lancet's third installment of a six-part series on global mental health discusses failures to address depression, schizophrenia, alcohol abuse, and developmental disorders in low- and middle-income countries. A review of 11,500 studies, or nearly 85,000 people in 17 countries, lead an international panel of authors to conclude that gaps in research and systems, shortages of community resources, and the failure to treat with price-effective interventions penalize low and middle-income countries: Most mental health systems in the world are dominated by...
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News: Sibs enhance life satisfaction
Adults with schizophrenia say they are more satisfied with life when siblings remain close, reports Psychiaric Services....
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News: Schizophrenia drug in pipeline
Enthusiasm greeted Eli Lilly's announcement that a drug to treat schizophrenia showed promising results - similar to Zyprexa but without the weight gain - in its initial stage of testing. This is considered the first major breakthrough in 50 years because it targets a different system of receptors which are triggered by an amino acid called glutamate, not the dopamine receptors. Work on glutamate receptors leading to this medicine emerged during the 1980s when scientists noted a street drug, PCP,...
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News: Learn your illness, author suggests
"Try to learn your illness," says Elyn Sacks, author of The Center Cannot Hold. In an interview with Time Magazine Saks, a graduate of Yale Law School and a tenured law professor at USC, discusses the onset of depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia, plus treatments and forced hospitalizations when she was a student at Oxford University. Her recovery has allowed great successes but seems easier since she started taking the medicine clozaril. Now she recognizes breakthrough symptoms as transient psychotic thoughts....
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News: FDA approves pediatric antipsychotic
Following double-blind controlled trials, the FDA approved Risperidal for pediatric use in two conditions, schizophrenia (ages 13-17), and bipolar disorders (ages 10-17). It was approved in 1992 to treat adults with schizophrenia....
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Commentary: A Personal Journey Wearing Three Hats: family, doctor and research director
by Lisa Dixon, MD, MPH
Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Lisa Dixon, is also a family member and a researcher. In "A personal journey wearing three hats" she writes about how her work has been informed by these roles while evaluating programs for families and consumers in the recovery process.

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News: Law school professor discusses her life, her illness
New York City talk-show host Lenny Lopate interviewed Elyn Saks (August 15), a law professor at USC, about her symptoms, treatments and, most of all, her successful work despite also suffering with schizophrenia....
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News: Understanding subjective and empirical symptoms
The Advance Access (August 16)Schizophrenia Bulletin reports that Australian researchers are examining the balance of empirical observations with the subjective experience of patient symptoms at the onset of psychosis. "A disturbance of the basic sense of self, from which the more elaborated 'first rank' psychotic symptoms emerge" write the authors, "contributes to a way of connecting otherwise apparently disconnected symptoms."...
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News: PET scans/ MRIs used diagnostically
The Menninger Clinic announced a novel step in the diagnostic process using MRI's (magnetic reasonance imaging) and PET scans (position emission tomography). Now part of Baylor University, Menninger is offering these tools in addition to traditional assessments for schizophrenia, bipolar, depression. PET scans and MRI's have been used for research, but not for diagnostic purposes....
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News: Anti-psychotics cut addictive cravings
Results of a 14-week double-blind study reported in the American Journal of Addiction showed both olanzapine and resperidone cut cravings for marijuana and cocaine for people with schizophrenia....
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News: Engineering schizophrenia in mice
Researchers have been able to breed mice with one of the genes associated with schizophrenia. The study by Dr. Akira Sawa appears in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
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News: Wayne Fenton remembered
As the anniversary of the death of Dr. Wayne Fenton approaches (9.06.06), the Schizophrenia Bulletin dedicated an issue to updating his expansive agenda including functional indicators for recovery, persistent negative symptoms, and cognitive function in schizophrenia. There is a moving discussion of how his insatiable curiosity, and research on early patients at Chestnut Lodge, led him to challenge existing paradigms....
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News: Diagnosing substance abuse and psychotic disorders
With mounting evidence that marijuana is a major contributor to schizophrenia, part of the research agenda for the DSM-V includes differentiating between substance-induced psychotic symptoms and independent psychotic disorders....
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News: Supreme Court decides against death penalty
In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court blocked the execution of a Texas man with schizophrenia who admitted to killing his in-laws. An important element in this closely watched case asked whether Scott Panetti knew the legal consequences of his action. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy said, "[g]ross delusions stemming from a severe mental disorder may put an awareness of a link between a crime and its punishment in a context so far removed from reality that the punishment...
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News: Saving Medicaid dollars
Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access, June 19, 2007 Medicaid could save big bucks by improving behavioral and psychosocial interventions for people with schizophrenia who end up hospitalized because of medication gaps leading to relapse. Basing projections on 2001-2003 California Medicaid data, the authors estimate savings at $106 million....
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News: DSM-V work ongoing
The Schizophrenia Bulletin is publishing a series of articles about the ongoing work for the newest revision of the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V). Two articles appear on-line in Advance Access Schizophrenia Bulletin (subscriptions required). One article, "Rethinking Psychosis," is based on a previous symposium assessing models and paradigms for diagnosis; another discusses the inclusion of cognitive impairment among the criteria for schizophrenia....
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News: Back to basics: disorders of thought vs. of mood
Schizoprhenia Bulletin online, May 21, 2007 The Schizophrenia Bulletin revisited the conceptual dichotomy -- thought versus mood disorders --prevalent since Kraepelin in an article about mania. Focusing on overlapping symptoms, especially during acute phases, the author attempts “to clarify the relationship between schizophrenia and psychotic mood disorders.” An earlier issue of the Bulletin discussed the prodrome to mania “to examine the phenotypic proximity to the schizophrenia prodrome.”...
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News: Cognition and schizophrenia
Schizophrenia Bulletin, online May 15, 2007 Authors of a study in the Schizophrenia Bulletin map models for cognitive deficits of schizophrenia and consider enhancements....
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News: Tracking cognitive function in schizophrenia
A study (N=93) from Switzerland appears in the Schizophrenia Bulletin (Advance Access edition) about cognitive function and alterations in two prodrome stages of schizophrenia. Results point to further research about early intervention to interrupt cognitive damage....
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News: Comparing caregiving in Germany and England
After controlling for gender, symptoms, marital status, and other characteristics of caregivers and patients with schizophrenia, British subjects (n=170) reported more of a burden than their German counterparts (n=333)....
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News: Risks for suicide with schizophrenia
Nineteen schizophrenia researchers from institutions nationwide have collaborated on a consensus report (256 references) identifying risk factors and clinical strategies for suicide prevention. The report is published in the March issue of the Annals of General Psychiatry....
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News: Literature review of family and cognitive therapies for schizophrenia
A British psychologist reviews literature for Psychiatric Times, discussing psychological interventions working with individuals whose symptoms include delusions and paranoia, and their families....
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News: $100 million to Harvard and MIT for genetic research
The Maryland philanthropy, the Stanley Foundation, has given $100 million to the Broad Institute to unlock the genetics of serious mental illness. Research will examine the DNA of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Broad is located at Harvrd University and MIT....
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News: Brain abnormalities in schizophrenia
Six articles in the American Journal of Psychiatry discuss abnormality in brain function in people with schizophrenia along with the clinical symptoms and cognitive consequences. Various imaging techniques were used to determine different levels of brain activity, such as: when asleep, filtering out and selecting responses, before and during speech, differentiating emotions, and frontal pathways....
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News: Metabolism and genes important to drug mechanisms
The way anti-psychotic drugs work in individuals with mental illness involves a person’s metabolic and genetic profile. This article, exerpted in Medscape from Current Opinion in Psychiatry and aimed for clinicians, outlines some of those variations along with research possibilities....
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News: NIH discovers a new gene“master switch” for intelligence and schizophrenia
Scientists at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered a single gene that plays a role in intelligence but also in schizophrenia. The gene, DARPP-32, controls the developing of circuits of information in the frontal cortex. This discovery links schizophrenia to intelligence in a way that’s not been understood before....
Full Story | Topics: genetics, research, schizophrenia | Comments (0)