Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

An accurate identification of individuals at ultra-high risk (UHR) based on psychometric tools to prospectively identify psychosis as early as possible is required for indicated preventive intervention. The diagnostic comparability of several psychometric tools is unknown. To address the psychometric comparability of the CAARMS, SIPS and BSABS for subjects who are the immediate family and three-generation blood kinship of patients with schizophrenia. To verify the viability and reliability of the three instruments for these subjects. subjects who all are immediate family and three-generation blood kinship of patients with schizophreniawere interviewed. All the subjects were assessed for a UHR state by three psychometric tools including CAARMS, SIPS and BSABS. The psychometric diagnosis results including at risk of psychosis (UHR+), not at risk of psychosis (UHR-), and Psychosis. Demographic and clinical characteristics interviewed by these three instruments were also measured. The inter-rater agreement was assessed for evaluation of the coherence of the three scales. Transition rates of CAARMS, SIPS and BSABS for UCH+ subjects within 2 years were also recorded.There is good diagnostic agreement between the CAARMS, SIPS and BSABS towards identification of UHR subjects who are immediate family and three-generation blood kinship of patients with schizophrenia. Also, these three instruments are reliable and valid for assessing and detecting at risk mental states in these subjects.

This is an observational, non-interventional study that will recruit Healthy Volunteers (HV) and subjects with clinically confirmed Schizophrenia (SZ). The purpose of this study is to establish the mean and variance across the HV and SZ cohorts, sites, and repeated tests of the electroencephalogram(EEG)/Event-related potentials (ERP) measures.

Deficits or abnormalities in reward processing are present in a number of psychiatric disorders. The overarching objective of the study is to conduct initial validation work towards optimising three experimental tasks - which have previously been shown to be sensitive to reward processing deficits - for future use in clinical trials. This initial validation work has the primary objective to uncover group differences in task outcome measures between healthy control participants, participants with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and participants with schizophrenia (SZ) using statistical analyses. This may provide some indications for the use of these tasks as clinically-relevant biomarkers. Primary aims include: (i) comparing the investigator's endpoint means and distributions to those in previously published data; (ii) replication of previously-reported differences between MDD/SZ vs. healthy control participants, and, (iii) exploring the relationship between task endpoints and subjective participant- and clinician-rated report of reward-related constructs (e.g. anhedonia, negative symptoms).

According to the World Health Organization; Bipolar disorder ranks in the top 20 causes of disability among all medical conditions and 6th among mental disorders worldwide. Bipolar disorder is noted as a serious mental illness involving emotional ups and downs.

The early stages of schizophrenia are associated with significant decreases in social and intellectual abilities, with more declines in chronic disease. Studies have identified relationships between duration of untreated psychosis (the duration between the onset of positive symptoms and treatment) and worse long term outcomes. However, the neurobiology of this phenomenon and its implications for response to antipsychotic medications remain poorly understood. Glutamatergic excess altering brain connectivity might provide an explanation for why those with longer duration of untreated psychosis have worse clinical outcomes. The investigators propose to use neuroimaging to study 67 first episode psychosis subjects before and after sixteen weeks of treatment with risperidone, a common antipsychotic. We will measure (1) glutamate and (2) structural and functional brain connectivity and test the hypotheses that glutamatergic abnormalities are present in first episode patients and that longer duration of untreated psychosis is associated with greater connectivity abnormalities that set the stage for poor response to treatment. 67 demographic-matched controls will also be recruited as a comparison group - healthy controls will not receive antipsychotic medication. The investigator's previous studies have made progress in the understanding of abnormalities in the glutamate system and brain connectivity in unmedicated patients with schizophrenia and modulation of these by antipsychotic medication. Two indices of glutamatergic dysfunction have been identified. While antipsychotic medications appear to modulate glutamate, the disturbance in the relationship between metabolites is not restored with treatment. In addition, the investigators found that both structural and functional connectivity abnormalities in unmedicated patients with schizophrenia predict patients' response to treatment. To the investigator's knowledge, no other group has performed a study that uses a combination of complementary neuroimaging techniques that will allow generating a broad characterization of glutamatergic function and brain connectivity in first episode psychosis and change with treatment. The results of the proposed studies could suggest a mechanism by which the duration of untreated psychosis is associated with poor treatment response which might lead to new interventions to target the illness.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the pharmacokinetics of aripiprazole in subjects with Bipolar 1 Disorder or Schizophrenia who have a history of suboptimal aderence and are currently on treatment with oral aripiprazole.

The purpose of this study is to establish the relationship between performance of patients with schizophrenia and relationship with perceived quality of sleep. The secondary objectives are: to establish the prevalence of schizophrenic patients reporting sleep disturbances; to assess the potential epidemiological risk factors associated with the perceived impairment of quality of sleep; to establish the relationship between the clinical condition and the quality of sleep perceived; to assess the performance level of patients.

The present study aimed to examine face and object perception processes in schizophrenic patients. Schizophrenia is associated with deficits in visual processing that represent a key feature in the disorder. Previous studies have shown that schizophrenics exhibit deficits in a variety of facial-processing tasks (e.g., face recognition, recognition of facial expressions), that may severely hinder the patients' interpersonal and social skills. Some investigators have attributed these deficits to impairments in configural processing in schizophrenia. That is, an impairment in the ability to process the spatial relations between the constituent parts of a configuration (e.g., the spacing between the eyes of a given face). To date, studies aimed to investigate this possibility (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2002; Yong-Wook et al., 2008) yielded conflicting results. Additionally, it is not yet clear whether the hypothesized impairment in configural processing is restricted to faces, or whether it is more general in nature and applies to objects as well.

The investigators aim to assess the dental status of psychiatric patients suffering from severe mental illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ptsd, resistant depression).

The purpose of this study is to study the predictive value of SensoDetect-BERA as a diagnostic tool in clinical practice for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.