[Forensic-Psychiatric Consultations in General Psychiatry]. / Forensisch-psychiatrisches Konsilangebot für die Allgemeinpsychiatrie.

A subgroup of psychiatric patients are at increased risk of committing interpersonal violence, which may lead to placements in forensic-psychiatric institutions. The majority of patients treated in forensic hospitals have had contact with the general psychiatric care system years before being forensically committed due to an offence. Nevertheless, attempts to establish models related to violence prevention in general psychiatry have remained sparse. In the Canton of Zurich, the forensic psychiatric consultation liaison service provides the general psychiatric clinics with access to forensic psychiatric expertise. In this paper, we describe the consultation service's diagnostic and advisory offers and aim to characterize the patient population seen by the service. We compared the three most common diagnostic groups (schizophrenic, affective and personality disorders) regarding reason for consultation, history of violence and substance abuse. In addition, we analyzed content and kind of the recommendations made. From 2013 to 2021, 188 patients in general psychiatric clinics in Zurich have been examined after informed consent. Most patients had a positive history of violence (72.7%) and substance use (66.1%). Almost half of the patients (48.4%) had been diagnosed with schizophrenia or a related disorder.

Attention as neurocognitive endophenotype of ADHD across the life span: a family study.

Endophenotypes mediate pathways between genetic variations and the psychiatric phenotype, or share genetic risk with the psychiatric phenotype. Identifying endophenotypes is an important step to unravel disease pathways underlying complex psychiatric phenotypes such as ADHD. Potential viable endophenotypes for ADHD across the lifespan are neurocognitive measures of basic attention functions, such as sustained attention, and executive attention functions (EF), such as inhibition. The present study evaluated the endophenotype criteria of familiality and state-independency for measures of basic attention and EF in affected- and unaffected parents of children with ADHD (N = 139), and typically developing children (N = 60). In addition, the added value of neurocognitive measures relative to questionnaire data in genetically informed designs was explored by comparing the intergenerational transmission of neurocognitive measures to those of ADHD symptom scores. Results revealed small-to-medium-sized familial effects of ADHD for reaction time measures of EF components and state-independency given familial effects. Parent-child correlations as estimates of intergenerational transmission of those neurocognitive measures were not higher than those of behavioral ADHD symptom ratings. Taken together, our results argue against neurocognitive measures as pivotal endophenotypes for ADHD across the lifespan. If studied as neurocognitive endophenotypes of ADHD in adults, reaction time measures of executive-rather than basic attention function-seem to be more sensitive.

Attention profiles in autism spectrum disorder and subtypes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Attention problems are observed in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Most neuropsychological studies that compared both disorders focused on complex executive functions (EF), but missed to contrast basic attention functions, as well as ASD- and ADHD subtypes. The present study compared EF as well as basic attention functioning of children with the combined subtype (ADHD-C), the predominantly inattentive subtype (ADHD-I), and autism spectrum disorder without ADHD (ASD-) with typically developing controls (TD). Basic attention functions and EF profiles were analysed by testing the comprehensive attention function model of van Zomeren and Brouwer using profile analysis. Additionally, neurocognitive impairments in ASD- and ADHD were regressed on dimensional measures of attention- and hyperactive-impulsive symptoms across and within groups. ADHD-C revealed a strong impairment across measures of EF compared to ASD- and TD. The ADHD-C profile furthermore showed disorder specific impairments in interference control, whereas the ASD- profile showed a disorder specific impairment in basic attention component divided attention. Attention- and hyperactive-impulsive symptom severity did not predict neurocognitive impairments across- or within groups. Study findings thus support disorder and subtype specific attention/EF profiles, which refute the idea of a continuum of ADHD-I, ADHD-C, and ASD with increasing neurocognitive impairments.

Empirically Determined, Psychopathological Subtypes in Children With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to empirically determine subgroups of ADHD defined by specific patterns of psychopathology. METHOD: A clinical sample of 223 children with ADHD, aged 5 to 14 years, was examined with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). In addition, comorbid psychiatric disorders, psychosocial risk factors, and socioeconomic status were assessed. RESULTS: Cluster analysis of CBCL subscales yielded a solution with four distinct subgroups. While "externalizers" showed a high rate of comorbid oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD), "obsessive-compulsives" exhibited thought problems, low rates of comorbid CD, and high symptoms of inattention. "High psychiatric symptom carriers" had high rates of familial risk factors, acute life events, comorbid ODD, and CD. "Low psychiatric symptom carriers" also scored low in all other variables studied. CONCLUSION: Children with ADHD can be divided into four subgroups according to their CBCL-based psychopathology, and these subgroups differ in their risk factor profiles.

New cytogenetically visible copy number variant in region 8q21.2.

BACKGROUND: Cytogenetically visible unbalanced chromosomal abnormalities (UBCA), reported for >50 euchromatic regions of almost all human autosomes, are comprised of a few megabases of DNA, and carriers are in many cases clinically healthy. It may be speculated, that some of the UBCA may be similar or identical to copy number variants (CNV) of the human genome. RESULTS: Here we report on a yet unreported cytogenetically visible copy number variant (CNV) in the long arm of chromosome 8, region 8q21.2, detected in three unrelated clinically healthy carriers. CONCLUSION: The first description of a cytogenetically visible CNV/UBCA in 8q21.2 shows that banding cytogenetics is far from being outdated. It is a cost efficient, up-to-date method for a single cell specific overview on the whole genome, still prepared to deliver unexpected findings.