[Subtypes of schizophrenics patients with attempted suicide]. / Subtipos de pacientes esquizofrénicos con tentativas suicidas.

INTRODUCTION: During the last decades, numerous research works have tried to determine what risk factors are associated with the schizophrenic patient's suicidal behavior but they have yielded contradictory results. Thus we hypothesized that these results' variability could be due, among other reasons, to the heterogeneity of suicidal schizophrenic population. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Thirty-two Schizophrenics patients who had made Attempted suicide were studied. They were assessed through a battery of Clinical scales for negative, positive, hopelessness, insight and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Two suicidal subtypes were identified according to the reasons that patients stated for attempting suicide. These two subtypes showed significant differences in two of the analyzed variables, namely hopelessness and PANSS positive subscale. DISCUSSION: Clinical implications coming from these results are discussed in the present paper.

[Efficiency of melatonin in the treatment of insomnia]. / Eficacia de la melatonina en el tratamiento del insomnio.

UNLABELLED: The aim of this research consists of studying whether melatonin (MLT) may be considered as an alternative for the treatment of insomnia. METHODS: A 33-year period (1966-1998) of computerised search using Medline database was performed. Melatonin, pineal gland and insomnia were used as key words. RESULTS: 93 articles were elicited; 85 were excluded because they were reviews (44) or were not directly related to the research topic (41). 111 insomniac patients were treated with MLT in 8 articles. 60% of the patients reported an improvement of sleep quality. Objective sleep measures also improved; there was a decrease in the sleep latency time and the number of awakenings (62% and 50% of patients respectively) after MLT treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Melatonin may have a promising future for the treatment of insomnia. The lack of standardised criteria for diagnosing sleep disorders and the lack of structured psychiatric interviews for ruling out psychiatric pathology are clear obstacles in generalizing these results.