[Depression and Violence: A Contradiction?] / Depression und Gewalt: Ein Widerspruch?

Depression and Violence: A Contradiction? Abstract. Depression is one of the leading diseases worldwide. Its symptoms are of great importance for a variety of areas within internal medicine, as patients often pay a visit to their general practitioners first. Although symptoms of depression are observed in both genders, existing peculiarities of the symptoms in men are only insufficiently known or acknowledged. Therefore, we dedicate this article to the concept of male depression, which can be characterized by social withdrawal, irritability or substance abuse. Here, we present practice-related associations between depression and violent behavior, which will be illustrated by two case studies. Of particular relevance is the so-called suicidal-homicidal syndrome, which should make further psychiatric, if not forensic-psychiatric evaluation mandatory.

Conflicting Priorities Between Risk Management and Treatment of Schizophrenia in Swiss Forensic Services-A Case Report.

The Swiss Criminal Code provides measures for mentally-ill offenders focusing on their need for treatment. This may lead to the deprivation of the patient's liberty up to several years. Under certain circumstances the mentally-ill offender can be sentenced to an indefinite incarceration. This case presentation we will describe a forensic psychiatric patient diagnosed with schizophrenia who was ordered an indefinite incarceration in Switzerland after he had been sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment for a deliberate killing. Initial presentation of symptomatology included formal thought disorders and negative symptoms such as affective flattening and alogia. Due to a scarcity of adequate treatment sites in the 90s and lack of scope for risk assessment and management, the patient could only be treated within highly regiment prison environments in the past. There, the patient's treatment concept primarily focused on short-term psychiatric care instead of providing an adequate treatment plan that would have been essential for the patient's improvement of chronic symptoms. This case description aims to present some of the fundamental issues observed in the forensic mental health system, where strong efforts are made to balance risk management and the treatment of severe mental health disorders. We will put the patient's own course of treatment and his progress within the penal system into context with ethical challenges in the forensic and correctional services and will provide potential recommendations for future research in the field of forensic psychiatry.

Physical activity is associated with left corticospinal tract microstructure in bipolar depression.

Psychomotor retardation and reduced daily activities are core features of the depressive syndrome including bipolar disorder (BD). It was the aim of this study to investigate white matter microstructure of the motor system in BD during depression and its association with motor activity. We hypothesized reduced physical activity, microstructural alterations of motor tracts and different associations between activity levels and motor tract microstructure in BD. Nineteen bipolar patients with a current depressive episode (BD) and 19 healthy controls (HC) underwent diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI)-scans. Quantitative motor activity was assessed with 24 h actigraphy recordings. Bilateral corticospinal tracts (CST), interhemispheric connections between the primary motor cortices (M1) and between the pre-supplementary motor areas (pre-SMA) were reconstructed individually based on anatomical landmarks using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) based tractography. Mean fractional anisotropy (FA) was sampled along the tracts. To enhance specificity of putative findings a segment of the optic radiation was reconstructed as comparison tract. Analyses were complemented with Tract Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) analyses. BD had lower activity levels (AL). There was a sole increase of fractional anisotropy (FA) in BD in the left CST. Further, there was a significant group x AL interaction for FA of the left CST pointing to a selective positive association between FA and AL in BD. The comparison tract and TBSS analyses did not detect significant group differences. Our results point to white matter microstructure alterations of the left CST in BD. The positive association between motor activity and white matter microstructure suggests a compensatory role of the left CST for psychomotor retardation in BD.

Brain Tumor-Associated Psychosis and Spirituality-A Case Report.

This case report describes a patient with a dysembryogenic neuroepithelial tumor localized in the posterior thalamus and internal capsule, which presented with psychosis including religiously determined severe self-mutilation, auditory hallucinations, and rituals. The patient's history includes periodic religiousness over decades of her life suggesting that spirituality in this case might be a symptom of tumor progression. Our case reports on the topology-related effect of lesions on different brain networks involved in the phenomenology of the patient's psychotic symptoms.

Comparison of psychopathological dimensions between major depressive disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorders focusing on language, affectivity and motor behavior.

This study tested whether patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders would differ in three dimensions of psychopathology (language, affectivity and motor behavior) as assessed by the Bern Psychopathology Scale (BPS) in a cohort of 58 patients with MDD and 146 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The overall estimation of severity of each of the three dimensions was rated on a seven-point Likert scale from severely inhibited to severely disinhibited. Here, more than half of the patients endorsed ratings that showed normal or mildly (dis-)inhibited behavior. At group level more pronounced negative ratings of affect were seen in MDD. Group comparisons of the severity ratings on language or motor behavior yielded no differences between schizophrenia spectrum disorders and MDD. At the individuals' levels, extreme ratings in the language and motor dimensions were more frequent in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and in the affectivity dimension more frequent in MDD. Shared psychopathological features could be seen across diagnoses, supporting a dimensional approach to psychopathology in endogenous psychoses. However, the groups differ in the severity of affect ratings as well as in the distribution of language, affectivity and motor ratings with more variance among the group of schizophrenia spectrum disorders.