Behav Sci (Basel)
July 2025
To enhance social interaction of residents living with dementia and their (in)formal carers in nursing homes, we examined the effects of a digital, person-centred, Photo-Activity (PA) versus a conversation activity (control). An explorative randomized controlled trial was conducted in 81 resident-informal carer (IC) dyads and 51 formal carers (FC) with three measurements (pre/post-test, 2-week follow-up). Intervention effects were tested using Mann-Whitney U's, and ANCOVA's with pre-test scores as covariates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJMIR Res Protoc
August 2025
Background: Novel therapies are crucial for patients with major depressive disorder, as more than 33% of patients do not respond to first-line treatments. A promising novel treatment strategy is an intensive 5-day course of personalized, functional connectivity-guided accelerated intermittent theta-burst stimulation (PAiT), modeled after the Stanford neuromodulation therapy protocol. This new form of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) may lead to higher remission rates in patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Catatonia is a severe psychomotor syndrome predominantly associated with depressive, bipolar, and psychotic disorders. Untreated catatonia has a 10% mortality rate and may lead to complications such as renal failure, rhabdomyolysis, pneumonia, embolism, and contractures. High doses of the benzodiazepine lorazepam, a gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-A receptor modulator, are the primary pharmacological treatment, enhancing GABA's inhibitory effect, potentially reducing symptoms of catatonia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEarly childhood adversity may dispose an individual to adopt a rigid and pervasive hypervigilant position toward information coming from others, resulting in high levels of epistemic mistrust (EM), which is supposed to increase the risk of developing psychopathology. A more intrinsic relationship between EM and the development of personality disorders (PDs) is assumed. Although the theory of epistemic trust (ET) is rather novel, it has quickly become widely accepted in the field, despite much empirical evidence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPersonal Ment Health
February 2025
Psychotherapy may contribute to the experience of meaning in life. This study investigated meaning in life among patients with personality disorders during inpatient or day-hospital psychotherapy. Meaning in life was approached from two conceptual perspectives: personality functioning with an emphasis on self-direction and existential psychology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Ment Health Nurs
February 2025
In mental healthcare, therapists' empathy and mentalizing are associated with better opportunities to establish positive working relations with patients. The present study aimed to explore mental health nurses' level of empathy and mentalizing (compared with reference groups studying or working in different contexts), the association between mental health nurses' level of empathy and mentalizing and sociodemographic characteristics of these nurses, and the association between mental health nurses' level of empathy and mentalizing. A cross-sectional design was used in adherence with the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology statement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Unipolar and bipolar mood disorders in older adults are accompanied by cognitive impairment, including executive dysfunction, with a severe impact on daily life. Up and till now, strategies to improve cognitive functioning in late-life mood disorders (LLMD) are sparse. Therefore, we aimed to assess the efficacy of adaptive, computerized cognitive training (CT) on executive and subjective cognitive functioning in LLMD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The construct of epistemic trust (ET) has gained wide acceptance and support in the field, although there is little empirical evidence to substantiate the theoretical assumed model. Studies of the assessment of ET were conducted in community samples only and the mediating role of attachment and mentalizing in addition to ET was not investigated. This study examines the theoretical assumed relationships between ET and attachment and mentalizing as well as the mediating role of attachment, mentalizing and ET in the association between childhood adversity and borderline personality disorder (BPD) in a heterogeneous sample containing also patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSleep disturbances and reduced physical activity (PA) are important risk factors for poor physical and mental health outcomes in people with psychosis. However, the precise interrelations between sleep, PA and psychopathology remain unclear. This study combined experience sampling (ESM) and actigraphy in thirty-two patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder to investigate interrelations of day-to-day variations in actigraphic estimates of PA and sleep and psychotic and affective symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
March 2025
Reliable predictors for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) effectiveness would allow a more precise and personalized approach for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). Prediction models were created using a priori selected clinical variables based on previous meta-analyses. Multivariable linear regression analysis was used, applying backwards selection to determine predictor variables while allowing non-linear relations, to develop a prediction model for depression outcome post-ECT (and logistic regression for remission and response as secondary outcome measures).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychother Psychosom
December 2024
Introduction: Although cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) effectively treats obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), many patients refuse CBT or drop out prematurely, partly because of anxiety regarding exposure and response prevention (ERP) exercises. Inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy (I-CBT) focuses on correcting distorted inferential thinking patterns, enhancing reality-based reasoning, and addressing obsessional doubt by targeting underlying dysfunctional reasoning, without incorporating an ERP component. We hypothesized that I-CBT would be non-inferior to CBT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol
June 2025
Background: Shared decision-making (SDM) is of increasing importance in mental health care, however, large studies on the effects of SDM in bipolar disorder (BD) are scarce.
Aim: To gain insight into the relationships between SDM, guideline concordance of treatments in everyday practice, satisfaction with care, and medication adherence in BD.
Method: In a nationwide observational study on the treatment of BD, patients were asked questions about their involvement in treatment.
Objective: This study examined the effects of switching antipsychotic polypharmacy (APP) to antipsychotic monotherapy (APM) on various side effects in inpatients with schizophrenia. Side effects of interest included psychic, autonomic, and sexual symptoms, as well as metabolic side effects and movement disorders.
Method: A 9-month parallel randomized open-label clinical trial was conducted involving 136 chronic inpatients from two psychiatric hospitals in the Netherlands.
Int J Soc Psychiatry
February 2025
Background: Patients with bipolar disorder benefit from guidelines recommended continuous community-oriented psychiatric and somatic healthcare, but often discontinue psychiatric care.
Aims: The first objective was to identify predictive factors of discontinuity of psychiatric care among patients who had received psychiatric care. The second objective was to examine if practice variation in discontinuity of psychiatric care existed between providers of psychiatric care.
Biol Psychiatry
April 2025
Background: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an emerging treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The neurobiological mechanisms of rTMS in OCD have been incompletely characterized. We compared clinical outcomes and changes in task-based brain activation following 3 different rTMS protocols, all combined with exposure and response prevention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Work-related stress and burnout remain common problems among employees, leading to impaired health and higher absenteeism. The use of mobile health apps to promote well-being has grown substantially; however, the impact of such apps on reducing stress and preventing burnout is limited.
Objective: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of STAPP@Work, a mobile-based stress management intervention, on perceived stress, coping self-efficacy, and the level of burnout among mental health employees.
Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a highly effective treatment for major depressive episodes (MDE). However, ECT-induced cognitive side-effects remain a concern. Identification of pre-treatment predictors that contribute to these side-effects remain unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an emerging treatment option for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The neurobiological mechanisms of rTMS in OCD have, however, been incompletely characterized. We compared clinical outcomes and changes in task-based brain activation following three different rTMS stimulation protocols, all combined with exposure and response prevention (ERP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpistemic trust (ET) refers to the predisposition to trust information as authentic, trustworthy and relevant to the self. Epistemic distrust - resulting from early adversity - may interfere with openness to social learning within the therapeutic encounter, reducing the ability to benefit from treatment. The self-report Questionnaire Epistemic Trust (QET) is a newly developed instrument that aims to assess ET.
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