Active clinical trials for "Mood Disorders"

The purpose of this study is to investigate mood and behavior changes in the time period surrounding and including menopause. This is an observational study; volunteers who participate will not receive any new or experimental therapies. Controversy exists regarding the relationship between estrogen and progesterone (gonadal steroid) changes and midlife-onset depression. This study will examine the role of gonadal steroids in perimenopausal mood and behavioral disorders. Perimenopausal women with depression symptoms and a control group of healthy perimenopausal volunteers will be compared to identify correlates of the occurrence of depression. Participants with depressive symptoms may also participate in companion studies that will test the antidepressant efficacy of phytoestrogens and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMS). A group of younger pre-perimenopausal women with normal menstrual cycle functioning will be followed through menopause in an effort to confirm the association of depression onset with changes in reproductive endocrine functioning....

Researchers are looking to examine the impact of probiotic administration on symptoms commonly associated with depression, anxiety, stress, sleep quality, and associated emotional responses in healthy men and women.

Aim: To describe anesthetic depth using spectal edge frequency (SEF) and density spectral array (DSA) and its relation to treatment effect of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Study design: Observational study Primary outcomes: SEF, DSA and treatment effect of ECT. Method: SEF and DSA si measured using a commercially available monitor for depth of anesthesia. Treatment effect of ECT will be evaluated using hemodynamic, electroencephalographic and clinical variables.

This study aims to assess differences in monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) distribution in the brain between seasonal affective disorder patients and healthy controls using positron emission tomography. In addition the investigators aim to demonstrate the impact of light therapy on MAO-A distribution In addition, a pilot study and a sub-study in healthy controls were performed

Investigators propose to determine whether knowing details about how a person's genes affect the way medicines work in the brain and body will help doctors pick more effective or safer medicine for that person. Target symptoms are restlessness, agitation, depression and related problems common in people with memory loss and dementia.

The aim of this study is to determine whether blood levels of lithium or sertraline are affected by different phases of the menstrual cycle and whether there is an effect on psychiatric symptoms. Subjects are seen for two visits: one visit during the luteal phase and one visit during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle. On each visit, they will fill out a depression, anxiety and mania rating scale. Also at each visit a 20mL blood sample will be drawn to measure progesterone level and either a lithium or sertraline level, depending on which medication the patient takes. The primary hypothesis in this study is that blood levels of lithium and sertraline will be significantly lower in women during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle than during the follicular phase. Examination will also be made of whether symptoms will increase in severity during the luteal phase as compared to the follicular phase. The investigators expect a negative linear association between symptom severity and blood level, i.e. expect symptom severity to worsen as blood levels of lithium or sertraline decrease.

Background: Patients with severe mental illness (SMI) have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF) than the general population and a control of these risk factors poorer. Serious mental illness often causes health teams to focus interventions in mental illness and put aside the CVRF. Objectives: This project aims to assess the CVRF, stratify the cardiovascular risk, adequate drug treatment to reduce this risk and evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention by professional community nurses in patients with SMI. Materials and Methods: Prospective study of a cohort of patients over 18 years with a diagnosis of SMI with two cross sections to evaluate the cardiovascular risk and adequacy of drug treatment. The investigators calculate the risk to the cardiovascular risk tables with the SCORE (Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation) for countries of low cardiovascular risk and the of Framingham REGICOR (Heart registry of Girona, Spain). The adequacy of pharmacotherapy will be assessed contrasting it with the recommendations of the Program of Preventive Activities and Health Promotion of Family medical association. The intervention will be conducted by professional nurses and consist of an initial psycho-educational intervention, and two more reinforcement throughout twelve months, of duration less than 30 minutes that will be addressed in an integrated manner the clinical situation with regard to cardiovascular risk. If necessary, pharmacological treatment will be prescribed. Twelve months after the first intervention, a second evaluation on cardiovascular risk and the effectiveness of the intervention will be performed.

This is a pilot project to study if repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) will benefit patients with bipolar depression safely. Based on published studies, this study hypothesizes that rTMS on the left dorsal prefrontal lobe will improve symptoms in some patients who have failed at least two medications.

The goal of this protocol, broadly stated, is to use targeted manipulations with intranasally administered oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) in conjunction with neurocognitive and neuroimaging paradigms to evaluate claims that OT and AVP inhibit and facilitate, respectively, the effective processing of aversive signals. Moreover, we wish to examine whether increased vasopressin levels will increase, and increased oxytocin levels decrease, the neural response in the amygdala and other limbic structures to aversive stimuli. In addition, we wish to assess whether OT and AVP administration will lead to the facilitation of conspecific recognition as appears to be the case for other mammalian species....

Compliance with treatment is notoriously low in psychiatric patients. Traditional methods of monitoring compliance, however, may underreport nonadherence to treatment. In this study, actual plasma levels at admission - which are ROUTINELY taken at the Dept Psychiatry of the Paracelsus Medical University - were compared to plasma levels that can be expected from the prescribed preadmission dosing regimen. This was done to give treating psychiatrists a quantitatively precise idea of how frequently they can expect their patients to have plasma levels that are below the level of medication as intended by the prescribing physician.