Lithium from mood stabilizer to putative cognitive enhancer

This study is the first to have demonstrated, by means of a highly sensitive test of visual memory, a potential hippocampus neuroprotective effect of lithium in patients with BD. Undoubtedly, other studies are needed to finally recognize lithium as a potential cognitive enhancer. Future studies should include, apart from highly sensitive cognitive tests, specific neurotrophic biomarkers, such as BDNF, NGF, etc. Finally, it will be of outmost importance to evaluate the minimal length of treatment and the optimum serum level in order to combine potential clinical benefit and, particularly for older patients, clinical safety

Nerve growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and the chronobiology of mood: a new insight into the "neurotrophic hypothesis"

The light information pathways and their relationship with the body rhythms have generated a new insight into the neurobiology and the neurobehavioral sciences, as well as into the clinical approaches to human diseases associated with disruption of circadian cycles. Light-based strategies and/or drugs acting on the circadian rhythms have widely been used in psychiatric patients characterized by mood-related disorders, but the timing and dosage use of the various treatments, although based on international guidelines, are mainly dependent on the psychiatric experiences. Further, many efforts have been made to identify biomarkers able to disclose the circadian-related aspect of diseases, and therefore serve as diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic tools in clinic to assess the different mood-related symptoms, including pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, loss of interest or pleasure, appetite, psychomotor changes, and cognitive impairments. Among the endogenous factors suggested to be involved in mood regulation, the neurotrophins, nerve growth factor, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor show anatomical and functional link with the circadian system and mediate some of light-induced effects in brain. In addition, in humans, both nerve growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor have showed a daily rhythm, which correlate with the morningness–eveningness dimensions, and are influenced by light, suggesting their potential role as biomarkers for chronotypes and/or chronotherapy. The evidences of the relationship between the diverse mood-related disorders, with a specific focus on depression, and neurotrophins are reviewed and discussed herein in terms of their circadian significance, and potential translation into clinical practice

La legalizzazione della cannabis. Tra irresponsabilità politica e deresponsabilizzazione degli psichiatri

In Italy a political parliamentary majority, recognized by all the press as "cross party", is going to approve the law that will legalize the use of cannabis. As diversified in different Countries, it is a phenomenon which affects substantially homogeneous many European nations, as well as several states of the USA and other Countries of the world. The authors, after listing the main harmful effects of cannabis, especially in young people, on cognitive functions and on the onset of several psychotic disorders, express the need for reflection by the mental health experts on a problem of extreme relevance and urgency care

The assisted suicide of Italians in Switzerland and the silence of psychiatry

The debate on different forms of request of death has taken on a broad dimension in public opinion over last years, often referring on profoundly differentiated and often opposing positions of principle. Beyond cultural, political or ideal positions, a further critical issue, often underestimated or quite not considered, concerns a person’s ability to express a valid consent to the request of death, according to the same criteria of validity of the informed consent to any medical act. This assumes particular importance in the case of assisted suicide. Assisted suicide represents a phenomenon in sharp growth in Western world. It is legal in many nations, and in Switzerland it is also allowed for foreign citizens, thus increasing the phenomenon of the so-called “tourism of suicide”. In addition to neoplastic and neurological diseases, depression has also been accepted as a disease that makes assisted suicide possible. This imposes profound clinical and ethical considerations, since depression is unanimously recognized as a treatable disease and since in its most serious forms, such as those in which suicidal ideation dominates, it can compromise the patient’s ability to express a valid consent to any medical act, including the assisted suicide. Furthermore, it is often overlooked that any serious and disabling somatic disease, source of intense and chronic suffering, carries the very high risk of the onset of unrecognized depressive conditions, able in turn to negatively influence the ability to express valid consent. Faced with this situation, which has involved a large number of Italian citizens in recent years, the personal and official voice of psychiatry is absolutely lacking, contrasting its silence with the opinions of those who do not want to take into account its potentially fundamental considerations

Anàlisi dels resultats i consideracions per l'aplicació a l'assignatura d'habilitats socials i comunicatives

Presentació de resultats de la prova de rúbrica d'avaluació CPA de l'assignatura d'Habilitats Socials i Comunicatives del Grau de Treball Socia

Psichiatria e bioetica. Un rapporto critico, uno stimolo alla riflessione

In the western world, especially in Italy, also legal attention to bioethical aspects is increasingly taking on importance in the debate at the medical, political and public level. In this debate, Psychiatry, as a scientific discipline closely integrated with the human and cultural, is underrepresented, little questioned on the many psychopathologal issues closely related to ethical aspects on complex themes. Against this background, Rivista di psichiatria, always keen to these topics, is designed to be a very special space for discussion with all the experts involved in mental health

(DE) Construyendo las barreras sociales : nuevos imaginarios sociales

La celebración del año internacional de las personas con discapacidad es un marco idóneo para que las personas con discapacidades y sus familias den una vez más, a conocer sus realidades y seguir reivindicando los recursos y servicios que necesitan, y por los que tantos años han luchando. Esta celebración debería ser también un marco de encuentro entre aquellas personas que tienen algún tipo de discapacidad con las que no las tienen, y de ese modo intentar romper con la barrera social que nos separa y permitir una convivencia plena de todos los ciudadanos; barreras que no sólo deben ser eliminadas en función de que existe un grupo de personas discapacitadas, sino que deberían caer en el conjunto de la sociedad. Desde esta mirada, la creación de fronteras forma parte de la vida cotidiana y se torna como algo ¿natural¿. Creemos que desde el trabajo social, es importante entender que aquello que se nos aparece como natural, en muchas ocasiones no lo es y que forma parte de las construcciones simbólicas de una sociedad. En nuestra aproximación a las diferencias, como trabajadores sociales y como ciudadanos, debemos estar advertidos que corremos el riesgo de acercarnos a este entramado complejo desde la lógica binaria/reduccionista de: capacitado ¿o¿ discapacitado, y el gran reto, entendemos, está en abordar, en con-versar desde la única lógica posible para la eliminación de barreras sociales, que es la de: (RE)CAPACITAR LA DISCAPACIDAD.The celebration to the International Year of the handicapped persons is a good framework to allow the handicapped persons and their families to show, once more, theirs realities and to continue claiming the needed resources and services they have been fighting for during all these years. This celebration would be also a meeting point between handicapped and not handicapped people in order to break with the social barriers separating us and to allow all the citizens to live together: social barriers that should fall in all the society, not only with handicapped people. From this point of view, creating social barriers is part of the quotidian life and frequently it is taken as something natural. We think that from the social work profession it is important to understand that what sometimes seems to be natural, usually it is not as natural but a symbolic construction of society. In our approach to differences as social workers and as citizens, we must be aware of the risk of trying to understand this complex matrix from a binary or reductionist logic of caped or not, and the great challenge is to talk from the only possible logic in order to eliminate the social barriers: (RE)THINK THE DISABILIT

Acute stimulation of vagus nerve modulates brain neurotrophins, and stimulates neuronal plasticity in the hippocampus of adult male rats

The present study was aimed at evaluating whether single intermittent acute cervical vagus nerve stimulation (ACVS), pro-vided at a frequency which exhibits a clinical efficacy, may influence brain neurotrophins and hippocampal plasticity. With this purpose, the brain of adult male rats undergoing ACVS was used to analyze the expression of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) in brain areas known to synthetize these growth factors, and the expression the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM), the synaptophysin (SYP) and biosynthetic GABA (GAD67) in the hippocampus.The effects of ACVS on NGF and BDNF protein and mRNA in hippocampus, hypothalamus and cortex two hours after stimulation were shown to be dependent on the frequencies of ACVS stimulation. Prolonged (three days post stimulation) modifications of NGF and BDNF were also observed in the hippocampus of ACVS rats. An early enhancement of the plasticity markers NCAM, SYP and GAD67 was also found in ACVS hippocampus. Three days after stimulation, NCAM and GAD67 levels were still higher than controls. Immunohistochemistry confirms the stimulatory effects of ACVS on GABA showing an increase in GAD67-positive cells in the dentate gyrus and CA3 hippocampal areas. This study shows that ACVS affects brain NGF and BDNF synthesis in a frequency-dependent manner. Neurotrophins changes are associated with increased hippocampal plasticity, as demonstrated by the observed molecular and morphological modifications. These findings support the role of brain neurotrophins in the ACVS mechanism of action

Conflicto, mediación comunitaria y creatividad social

Conflicto, mediación comunitaria y creatividad socia