Malign catatonia, treatment-resistant benzodiazepine but treated successfully With electroconvulsive treatment: A case report

Catatonia is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that can occur in schizophrenia, major depression and general medical condition. It presents with decrease in psychomotor activity or increase in motor symptoms or a change in motor activity in time. It is known that acute catatonia and malign catatonia responds to benzodiazepine treatment to a great extent. Here, we report a case of acute and malign catatonia which did not respond to benzodiazepine treatment and treated successfully with electroconvulsive treatment. As we know, there are many case reports and studies about catatonia in our country, but our case is the first case which is resistant to benzodiazepine treatment although it has an acute beginning, we think that our case has a clinical importance in this aspect

Postictal catatonia in a schizophrenic patient and electroconvulsive treatment

Catatonic state has been related to variable medical, neurological, and psychiatric disorders. Although it is commonly associated with schizophrenia, epilepsy presenting as catatonialike seizures or ictal catatonia was rarely reported. Moreover, the coexistence of schizophrenia and epilepsy in a patient complicates the diagnosis and management. Here we report a case of postictal catatonia in a patient with schizophrenia who was successfully treated by electroconvulsive treatment, and in, this context, we aimed to review the therapeutic effect of electroconvulsive treatment in postictal catatonia

Neuropsychological performance in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A comparison with bipolar disorder and healthy controls

This study examined whether patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have deficits in executive functioning and memory, as well as the specificity of any OCD-related neuropsychological dysfunction. Previous studies have indicated poorer performance among individuals with OCD compared to healthy controls across the majority of neuropsychological domains, however, findings are very inconsistent. We included 34 individuals with bipolar-I disorder (BP-I), 35 untreated patients with OCD, and 33 healthy controls matched for age, gender, and education. Participants completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) visual-reproduction subscale, and Stroop Color-Word Interference Test (SCWIT). Compared to both healthy controls and participants with OCD, patients with BP-I showed poorer performance in long-delay verbal recall. Although participants with OCD performed more poorly in visual recall than both BP-I patients and healthy controls, their scores were within the normative range. In pairwise comparisons, OCD did not differ from either BP-I or controls. No significant differences were found in verbal memory or Stroop performance between OCD and healthy controls. Overall, we found no significant differences in neuropsychological performance between patients with OCD and healthy controls that could potentially contribute to functional impairment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Reducing Mental Illness Stigma in Mental Health Professionals Using a Web-based Approach

Objective: This study was designed to investigate the efficacy of a web-based mental disorder stigma education program for mental health professionals. Methods: The sample consisted of 205 individuals who were either residents or specialists in psychiatry. Participants were contacted through a national web-based e-mail group that consisted of professionals in psychiatry, who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received an informative e-mail which contained a general account of "stigma" before they were asked to respond to an Internet-based questionnaire which was designed to predict their stigmatizing attitudes towards individuals with mental disorders. Control subjects, on the other hand, were asked to respond to the same Internet-based questionnaire without having been given the aforementioned informative e-mail. Results: The experimental group, compared to the control group, demonstrated a lesser stigmatizing attitude towards individuals with mental illness, as measured by the Internet-based survey which utilized the "social distance" concepts of stigma. Conclusions: These data suggest that such "anti-stigma" campaigns using the potential of the Internet might be an effective tool in the fight against the stigmatization of persons with mental illness