Psychosis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Psychosis, including details on clinical depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder.

Remission of persistent methamphetamine-induced psychosis after electroconvulsive therapy: presentation of a case and review of the literature.

Grelotti DJ, Kanayama G, Pope HG

Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.

Illicit methamphetamine abuse represents a major problem in many countries worldwide, including the United States. Prolonged regular smoking or injection of methamphetamine can cause a psychosis, typically characterized by paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations and often associated with disturbances in mood. These symptoms may persist long after methamphetamine is discontinued and may prove refractory to antipsychotic medications. The authors describe a patient who developed a typical methamphetamine psychosis that persisted despite months of abstinence from methamphetamine and weeks of treatment with antipsychotic medication but that responded promptly to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on two separate occasions: on initial presentation and again a year later when the patient relapsed into methamphetamine abuse and developed psychosis again. The authors review the large international literature on methamphetamine psychosis, much of which is from Japan and has not previously been summarized in English. Persistent methamphetamine psychosis has been widely reported in Japan for more than 50 years but is rarely discussed in the American literature, possibly because some such cases are misdiagnosed in the United States as primary psychotic disorders. Given the growing public health problem of methamphetamine abuse in the United States, the distinction between persistent methamphetamine psychosis and a primary psychotic disorder has grown increasingly important. Thus, American clinicians should be alert to the possibility of methamphetamine psychosis and may wish to consider ECT in refractory cases.

Published 13 January 2010 in Am J Psychiatry, 167(1): 17-23.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

Articles on Psychosis published 13 January 2010:

Specific and generalized neuropsychological deficits: a comparison of patients with various first-episode psychosis presentations.   Am J Psychiatry, 167(1): 78-85.

OBJECTIVE: Overwhelming evidence suggests that compromised neuropsychological function is frequently observed in schizophrenia. Neurocognitive dysfunction has often been reported in other psychotic disorders, although there are inconsistencies in the literature. In the context of four distinct diagnostic groups, the authors compared neuropsychological performance among patients experiencing their first psychotic episode. METHOD: Data were derived from a population-based, case-control study of ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Schizophrenia in the offspring of antenatally depressed mothers in the northern Finland 1966 birth cohort: relationship to family history of psychosis.   Am J Psychiatry, 167(1): 70-7.

OBJECTIVE: Maternal depression is relatively common during pregnancy. The authors examined whether maternal antenatal depressed mood increased the risk of schizophrenia and other psychoses among offspring with and without a familial history of psychosis. METHOD: In the Northern Finland 1966 birth cohort, mothers of 12,058 children were asked at mid-gestation at the antenatal clinic if they felt depressed. The offspring were followed for over 30 years, and subsequent schizophrenia and other ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Psychosis published 30 November 2009:

Filicide in Austria and Finland--a register-based study on all filicide cases in Austria and Finland 1995-2005.   BMC Psychiatry, 9: 74.

BACKGROUND: Filicide is the tragic crime of murdering one's own child. Previous research has found that the offending parents are commonly depressed and that suicide is often associated as an actual act or an intention. Yet, filicide is an underreported crime and previous studies have been strained with methodological problems. No comprehensive international studies on filicide have been presented in the literature until now. METHODS: This was a descriptive, comprehensive, register-based study ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Psychosis published 25 November 2009:

Cannabis abuse and severity of psychotic and affective disorders in Israeli psychiatric inpatients.   Compr Psychiatry, 51(1): 37-41.

The influence of cannabis abuse on the severity of existing psychotic and affective symptoms is still unclear. Among 470 consecutively admitted psychotic or affective patients, 54 active (in the previous month) cannabis abusers were detected via urine tests (Sure Step TM kits; Applied Biotech Inc, San Diego, Calif) and Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID- IV) questionnaire. In 24 cases, substances other than cannabis were abused; 392 patients were nonabusers. All patients were ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Relationship of "prodromal" symptoms with severity and type of psychopathology in the active phase of schizophrenia.   Compr Psychiatry, 51(1): 1-7.

BACKGROUND: Both retrospective and prospective studies have identified a broad spectrum of "prodromal" symptoms, but their relationship to those of frank psychosis remains largely unexplored. METHOD: In 73 successive hospitalized patients with schizophrenia in the first or second psychotic episode and with duration of illness 3 years or less from the onset of psychosis, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, Axis I diagnoses were made. In ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Defining "good" and "poor" outcomes in patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder: a multidimensional data-driven approach.   Psychiatry Res, 170(2): 161-7.

The study's goal was to characterize the typology of patient outcomes based on social and occupational functioning and psychiatric symptoms following antipsychotic drug treatment, and to explore predictors of group membership representing the best/worst outcomes. A hierarchical cluster analysis was used to define groups of patients (n=1449) based on endpoint values for psychiatric symptoms, social functioning, and useful work measured up to 30 weeks of treatment. Stepwise logistic regression ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

The use of oral contraceptives as a prevention of recurrent premenstrual psychosis.   Psychiatry Res, 170(2): 290-1.

Premenstrual psychosis is a rare and not formally recognized disorder (DSM-IVR, ICD-10). The literature mainly consists of clinical cases. There have been preliminary reports of improvement in such cases after administration of oral contraceptives. We present a case of premenstrual psychosis in which hormonal treatment was effective in preventing symptomatic relapses. [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Psychosis published 10 November 2009:

Efficacy of using cognitive status in predicting psychosis: a 7-year follow-up.   Biol Psychiatry, 66(11): 1023-30.

BACKGROUND: Despite extensive early detection research in schizophrenic psychoses, methods for identifying at-risk individuals and predicting their transition to psychosis are still unreliable. Moreover, there are sparse data on long-term prediction. We therefore investigated long-term psychosis transition in individuals with an At Risk Mental State (ARMS) and examined the relative efficacy of clinical and neuropsychological status in optimizing the prediction of transition. METHODS: Sixty-four ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

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