Paranoid

INTRODUCTION: Lipedematous scalp (LS) is a rare disorder characterized by thickening of the adipose subcutaneous scalp layer without associated hair loss. To date, there have been fewer than 100 reported cases of LS. LS occurring in siblings has not been previously reported. CASE PRESENTATION: We present a 58-year-old and 63-year-old pair of black Caribbean female siblings with LS. Scalp thickness on ultrasound of the vertex in each case was 12 mm and 11 mm from skin to periosteum, respectively (normal range: 5-6 mm)...

OBJECTIVE: To date the relationships between rape myths and other psychological constructs within males who have committed rape have not been explored sufficiently. Considered as a risk factor for the perpetration of rape it seems significant to examine their association to individual behavioral and personality characteristics more in detail. METHODS: Therefore, we analyzed the relations between self-reported rape myth acceptance and the self-evaluation of aggressiveness, assertiveness, hypersexuality, social anxiety, sexual anxiety, SCID personality characteristics and the external assessment of psychopathy within a sample of N=569 males convicted of rape...

BACKGROUND: With efforts increasing worldwide to understand and treat paranoia, there is a pressing need for cross-culturally valid assessments of paranoid beliefs. The recently developed Revised Green et al., Paranoid Thoughts Scale (R-GPTS) constitutes an easy to administer self-report assessment of mild ideas of reference and more severe persecutory thoughts. Moreover, it comes with clinical cut-offs for increased usability in research and clinical practice. With multiple translations of the R-GPTS already available and in use, a formal test of its measurement invariance is now needed...

OBJECTIVES: The COVID-Related Thoughts and Behavioral Symptoms (Cov-Tabs) is a self-reported questionnaire developed to identify the presence of psychological distress and anxiety-related behavior associated with COVID-19. This scale has been used since the first episodes of mass contamination of COVID-19 disease in the USA without psychometric validation analysis. The objective of this paper is to validate the French version of the Cov-TaBS. METHOD: In this study, we assessed a French translation of Cov-Tabs in 300 subjects from the general population...

Diverse psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been reported for 6 months after infection. We conducted a prospective study to evaluate the psychological impact of COVID-19 infection in newly diagnosed cases that were followed up at 1, 6, and 9 months after infection. 137 people were recruited and divided into four groups based on the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines. They were evaluated using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Post-traumatic stress disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), and Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90)...

Rapidly progressive dementia (RPD) is caused by a heterogeneous group of neurological disorders, and the prototype is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). However, treatable causes including autoimmune encephalitis are often underrecognized and undertreated. A 72-year-old female patient was admitted with a 10-month history of rapidly progressive cognitive decline, visual hallucinations, paranoid behavior, diarrhea, and an 18-kg unintentional weight loss. On the physical exam, she was only oriented to the person and demonstrated an exaggerated startle response with diffuse rigidity...

A clear understanding of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and related spectrum disorders has been limited by clinical heterogeneity. We investigated whether relative severity and predominance of one or more delusion subtypes might yield clinically differentiable patient profiles. Patients (N = 286) with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) completed the 21-item Peters et al. Delusions Inventory (PDI-21). We performed factor analysis followed by k-means clustering to identify delusion factors and patient subtypes...

BACKGROUND: Depression in patients with schizophrenia worsens the course of the disease by increasing the risk of suicide, by complicating the clinical picture of the disorder, and by reducing the quality of the social functioning; its treatment is difficult, since monotherapy, even when involving modern antipsychotics, does not always prove successful. While the prescription of additional antidepressants (ADs) can improve the likelihood of a better outcome, the effectiveness of such augmentation in many cases is yet to be proven...

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) was introduced in the DSM-III in 1980. From the DSM-III to the DSM-5, no major changes have occurred in its defining criteria. The disorder is characterized by instability of self-image, interpersonal relationships and affects. Further symptoms include impulsivity, intense anger, feelings of emptiness, strong abandonment fears, suicidal or self-mutilation behavior, and transient stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. There is evidence that BPD can be reliably diagnosed and differentiated from other mental disorders by semi-structured interviews...

(1) Background: Suicide is the main cause of death in Italian prisons. The largest number of inmates who killed themselves was recorded during three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to explore psychosocial risk factors for suicide among inmates incarcerated before and after the onset of COVID-19. (2) Methods: At prison reception, inmates underwent clinical interviews and were assessed using the Blaauw Scale and Suicide Assessment Scale. Psychological distress, measured by the Symptom Checklist-90-R, was compared between inmates admitted before and after COVID-19...

BACKGROUND: Our study expand upon a large body of evidence in the field of neuropsychiatric imaging with cognitive, affective and behavioral tasks, adapted for the functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (fMRI) experimental environment. There is sufficient evidence that common networks underpin activations in task-based fMRI across different mental disorders. AIM: To investigate whether there exist specific neural circuits which underpin differential item responses to depressive, paranoid and neutral items (DN) in patients respectively with schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD)...

Frontotemporal dementia is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by atrophy of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, and it is believed to primarily develop based on genetic factors. Its initial symptoms can appear relatively early, even between the ages of 40-50, affecting approximately 15-22 individuals out of 100,000 annually. The disease manifests in various forms, categorized into behavioral, aphasic, and motor variants due to its diverse presentations. The behavioral variant, constituting about half of the cases, is the most common type...

Epistemic stance, comprising epistemic trust, mistrust, and credulity, and the closely related construct of mentalizing have been related to paranoid ideation and conspiracy mentality. All phenomena are common in the general population and may become clinically and societally relevant at an extreme expression by influencing an individual's positioning towards socially transmitted information possibly as far as complete social detachment or attachment to extremist views. Herein, an individual's experienced distress may play an important role, which has however largely been neglected in empirical research...

Methamphetamine use disorder (MAUD) can substantially jeopardize public security due to its high-risk social psychology and behaviour. Given that the dopamine reward system is intimately correlated with MAUD, we investigated the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), as well as methylation status of dopamine receptor type 4 (DRD4), catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) genes, and paranoid and motor-impulsive symptoms in MAUD patients. A total of 189 MAUD patients participated in our study. Peripheral blood samples were used to detect 3 SNPs and 35 CpG units of methylation in the DRD4 gene promoter region and 5 SNPs and 39 CpG units in the COMT gene...

BACKGROUND: Reliable and valid assessment of paranoia is important in forensic psychiatry for providing adequate care. VR technology may add to current assessment procedures, as it enables observation within realistic (social) situations resembling the complexity of everyday life. VR constitutes a promising tool within forensics, due to the restricted nature of forensic psychiatric hospitals and ethical challenges arising from observing potentially dangerous behaviors in real life. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the feasibility of VR assessment for paranoid ideation in forensic psychiatric inpatients qualitatively by assessing the experiences of patients and a clinician, and to explore how the VR measures relate to established clinical measures...

BACKGROUND: Sexual dysfunction is commonly observed in individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), along with various psychological symptoms such as anxiety, somatic complaints, interpersonal sensitivity, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. However, there is a research gap in understanding the impact of these psychological symptoms on sexual functioning in MDD. Furthermore, there is limited data on the incidence of sexual dysfunction among drug-naive MDD patients in West China...

OBJECTIVE: Identification of psychopathological characteristics of depressive-delusional states with religious content, development of a typology, determination of formation features, nosological assessment. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 79 patients (47 female, 32 male, mean age 27±6.5 years) with depressive-delusional states with religious content within the affective and schizophrenia spectrum disorders were studied. Clinical-psychopathological, psychometric (PANSS, HDRS, S...

I divide this paper into three parts. First, I discuss Freud's ideas about repression and the unconscious sense of guilt in order to compare them with Klein's view that we disown uncomfortable facts through a process of splitting and projection, leading to a paranoid defence against guilt. Second, I describe Klein's struggle to understand the origin and the severity of the primitive super-ego which was so prominent in her child patients. She considered that an important aim of analysis was to moderate the severity of the super-ego to create a more humane inner world...

Priapism is a painful and emergent side effect that has been linked to some antipsychotics and other psychiatric medications, most often trazodone. This is thought to be due to some level of alpha-1 adrenergic blockade by these medications. Aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic with notably weak alpha-1 adrenergic antagonism. Thus, we report on a unique case of aripiprazole-induced priapism in a patient with schizophrenia and recurrent episodes of antipsychotic-induced priapism. This study offers insight into the potential mechanism of aripiprazole-induced priapism and offers alternative medications, such as olanzapine and lumateperone, to treat the patient's ongoing psychotic disorder...

Longitudinal studies exploring the role of early personality vulnerabilities as risk factors for later NSSI dynamics are scarce. In this study, we assess how pre-adolescent borderline personality pathology (BPP) traits (assessed at mean age 12.78; SD age = 1.38, age range = 7.17-14.78) shape dynamic links between daily socio-emotional dysregulation and NSSI thoughts during emerging adulthood ( M age = 20.96, SD age = 1.63). Mothers of 131 children completed questionnaires about their child's BPP traits in pre-adolescence...