Active clinical trials for "Psychotic Disorders"

The visual system has increasingly been recognized as an important site of injury in patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses. Visual system alterations manifest as visual perceptual aberrations, deficits in visual processing, and visual hallucinations. These visual symptoms are associated with worse symptoms, poorer outcome and resistance to treatment. A recent study using brain lesion mapping of visual hallucinations and identified a causal location in the part of the brain that processes visual information (visual cortex). The association between visual cortex activation and visual hallucinations suggests that this region could be targeted using noninvasive brain stimulation. Two case studies have found that brain stimulation to the visual cortex improved visual hallucinations in treatment resistant patients with psychosis. While promising it is unclear whether these symptom reductions resulted from activity changes in the visual cortex or not. Here we aim to answer the question whether noninvasive brain stimulation when optimally targeted to the visual cortex can improve brain activity, visual processing and visual hallucinations. The knowledge gained from this study will contribute to the field of vision by providing a marker for clinical response and by personalizing treatment for patients with psychosis suffering from visual symptoms. This grant will allow us to set the foundation for a larger more targeted study utilizing noninvasive brain stimulation to improve visual symptoms in patients with psychosis.

This is a definitive study to support the safety and efficacy evaluation of BXCL501 for the acute treatment of agitation in schizophrenia. The BXCL501-301 study is designed to characterize the efficacy, safety and tolerability of BXCL501 (sublingual film formulation of DEX, HCl) in agitation associated with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or schizophreniform disorder.

The Unified Protocol (UP) is an emotion-focused, cognitive-behavioural intervention that is developed to target core temperamental characteristics underlying anxiety and depressive disorders. Ehrenreich and colleagues developed UP for adolescents (UP-A). The current study aims at evaluating efficacy of UP-A for the treatment of emotional disorders in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. The current study would recruit 27 Chinese-speaking patients, age 13 to 18, with a primary diagnosis of any Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (Fifth edition) anxiety disorders and/or depressive disorder. They would be randomized into one of the two treatment arms, namely UP-A treatment condition (UP-A), and treatment-as-usual (TAU) condition. Following randomization, participants in the UP-A condition would attend individual treatment based on UP-A, which last for 10 to 12 weeks. Participants in the TAU condition would be provided with usual clinical psychological service (i.e. treatment as usual) in the first 12 weeks before they start attending the same individual treatment program. Primary outcomes would be patient's self-rated measures on clinical symptoms, and secondary outcomes would be their clinical diagnoses, parent-rated and other self-rated measures. It is hypothesized that, comparing to those in TAU, participants in the UP-A condition would show improvements in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and functional impairment at the end of treatment. When the outcomes of all participants are combined, it is hypothesized that participants will show demonstrate improvement in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and functional impairment after completing the UP-A and at the 3-month follow-up.

Connection to Environment with Cognitive Therapy (CONNECT): A Single-Case Experimental Design Exploring Dissociative Experiences and Voices Emerging empirical evidence has suggested that dissociation is a robust determinant of voice-hearing in psychosis, and that dissociation mediates the link between trauma and voices. Despite the emerging evidence-base, targeted therapeutic interventions focusing on dissociation remain largely untested. The aim of the current study is to investigate whether targeting dissociation leads to improvements in distressing voices in people with a history of trauma. This will be done by delivering an eight session intervention called 'CONNECT' to six individuals within the Glasgow Psychological Trauma Service (GPTS) who hear voices, have experienced trauma and are dissociating. The intervention will focus on learning strategies to manage dissociation. It is hypothesised that reduced levels of dissociation will be associated with reduction in the frequency and distress associated with hearing voices. This study will use a randomized multiple baseline single-case experimental design, meaning that participants will be randomly allocated to a baseline of two, three or four weeks and then will begin eight weeks of Connection to Environment Cognitive Therapy (CONNECT). As well as daily measures during baseline and intervention phases, there will be four assessment points (baseline, pre-intervention, post-intervention and follow-up). The study will take approximately three months plus follow-up one month after therapy ends. Individual levels of dissociation and voices will be compared during baseline and intervention periods using visual analysis and Tau-U. This study will contribute to the evidence-based for dissociation interventions targeting distressing voices among this population. It serves to investigate the proposed mechanism in a clinical population using a therapeutic intervention. It will therefore inform clinicians of the effectiveness and feasibility of using such strategies in clinical practice and may have good generalizability to practice.

Design: This parallel randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted according to the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT). Methods: In total, 90 patients were randomly assigned to either the intervention or the control group. After a 2-week washout period, the intervention group was reassigned to the control and vice versa. The CONSORT checklist for RCT was reported. Psychotic symptoms, emotional reactions, behavioral relaxation responses and heart rates were assessed at 6 time points.

The study aimed to investigate the effects of high-definition transcranial random noise stimulation over bilateral prefrontal cortex on psychopathological symptoms, other clinical outcomes, autonomic functioning ,and brain oscillatory activity in schizophrenia patients.

The goal of this study is to pilot test a culturally tailored Family Psychoeducation model (KUPAA) for adults with psychotic disorders and their relatives that is appropriate for cultural settings inclusive of both traditional and biomedical ideas about mental illness and that incorporates relatives as co-facilitators of the intervention.

Approximately 60 chronic smokers with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who are motivated to try to quit smoking will be randomized to receive smoking cessation treatment with the FDA-approved medication, varenicline, delivered either a) at its standard dose and titration schedule (half of the participants) versus b) at a lower dose and slower titration schedule (the other half), for 12 weeks. All smokers will choose a target quit date sometime between 8 to 35 days after starting the medication. All participants will receive ten 30-minute sessions of a behavioral treatment called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Participants will be followed for an additional 12 weeks off study medication. The major endpoint is the feasibility of combining ACT with the different dosing strategies. Investigators will also conduct a blood test that measures the breakdown of nicotine in the body to explore whether that measure influences treatment response and side effects.

The goal of this clinical trial is to test in three samples, including sample 1: lay people without reported depression symptoms, sample 2: lay people with reported depression symptoms and sample 3: mental health clinicians. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1) do each of these populations show a bias against psychotherapy wherein they judge psychotherapy to be less effective, relative to baseline ratings, when a mental illness (i.e., depression) is attributed to biological factors, 2) whether an intervention emphasizing the neurobiological effects of psychotherapy can remove this bias against psychotherapy for biologically-caused mental disorders, and 3) whether this intervention is more effective compared to an active control intervention that emphasizes the effectiveness of psychotherapy, but not its neurobiological effects. Participants will rate the effectiveness of psychotherapy for depression before and after learning about the biological causes of depression be assigned to one of three conditions: 1) an intervention condition where participants will receive a brief reading passage (approximately 126 words in length) providing psychoeducation about how psychotherapy changes the brain of an individual with depression, or 2) an active control condition where participants will receive a reading passage (approximately 115 words) emphasizing the effectiveness of psychotherapy, or 3) a control condition where they will receive no additional materials as a secondary outcome, participants will also rate the effectiveness of medication for depression, before and after learning about the biological causes of depression

The present study is a randomized controlled trial comparing the efficacy and acceptability of CBT and MBCT group-based interventions adapted for young people at elevated risk for mood or psychotic disorder onset or relapse. Young people (ages 13-24) are provided with targeted psychoeducation and learn a variety of coping skills and wellness practices for mood regulation and stress and distress management. Parents meet separately to learn the same skills and receive guidance in supporting their youth with skill development. The therapy is also augmented by a mobile phone application that supports regular symptom monitoring and skills practice.