Home  About us  Contact
 

Affective Illness (affective + illness)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Medical Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

A Child's Experience of Parental Depression: Encouraging Relational Resilience in Families with Affective Illness,

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2000
Lynn Focht-Birkerts LICSW
In this article, we describe an approach that parents with affective illness can use to foster the emotional resilience of their children. Building on current research that emphasizes the need to formulate concepts of risk and resilience in terms of family or relational processes, we propose that affectively ill parents can promote resilience in their children by helping them express the affect they experience as a result of parental illness-related behavior. Risk and resilience are conceptualized in terms of a family's ability to process emotion or affect: a family's need to constrict affect is a risk factor, while the family's ability to elaborate affect encourages relational resilience. An object relations model is used to discuss the ways in which encouraging this elaboration of affect, especially negative affect, contributes to resilience in children. We describe ways in which a preventive intervention helps to increase parents' emotional responsiveness to their children. Using extensive narrative data from followup interviews with families and children, constriction and expansion of emotion in children concerning affectively ill parents are documented, by multiple interviewers, over a span of more than 5 years. Where danger threatens, there also grows the saving power. ,J.C.F. Hölderlin1Patmos [source]

Lower suicide risk with long-term lithium treatment in major affective illness: a meta-analysis

ACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA, Issue 3 2001
Leonardo Tondo
Objective:,To compare suicide rates with vs. without long-term lithium treatment in major affective disorders. Method:,Broad searching yielded 22 studies providing suicide rates during lithium maintenance; 13 also provide rates without such treatment. Study quality was scored, between-study variance tested, and suicide rates on vs. off lithium examined by meta-analyses using random-effects regression methods to model risk ratios. Results:,Among 5647 patients (33,473 patient-years of risk) in 22 studies, suicide was 82% less frequent during lithium-treatment (0.159 vs. 0.875 deaths/100 patient-years). The computed risk-ratio in studies with rates on/off lithium was 8.85 (95% CI, 4.12,19.1; P<0.0001). Higher rates off-lithium were not accounted for by treatment-discontinuation. Conclusion:,Suicide risk was consistently lower during long-term treatment of major affective illnesses with lithium in all studies in the meta-analysis, including the few involving treatment-randomization. [source]

A Child's Experience of Parental Depression: Encouraging Relational Resilience in Families with Affective Illness,

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2000
Lynn Focht-Birkerts LICSW
In this article, we describe an approach that parents with affective illness can use to foster the emotional resilience of their children. Building on current research that emphasizes the need to formulate concepts of risk and resilience in terms of family or relational processes, we propose that affectively ill parents can promote resilience in their children by helping them express the affect they experience as a result of parental illness-related behavior. Risk and resilience are conceptualized in terms of a family's ability to process emotion or affect: a family's need to constrict affect is a risk factor, while the family's ability to elaborate affect encourages relational resilience. An object relations model is used to discuss the ways in which encouraging this elaboration of affect, especially negative affect, contributes to resilience in children. We describe ways in which a preventive intervention helps to increase parents' emotional responsiveness to their children. Using extensive narrative data from followup interviews with families and children, constriction and expansion of emotion in children concerning affectively ill parents are documented, by multiple interviewers, over a span of more than 5 years. Where danger threatens, there also grows the saving power. ,J.C.F. Hölderlin1Patmos [source]

Volumetric MRI studies of mood disorders: do they distinguish unipolar and bipolar disorder?

BIPOLAR DISORDERS, Issue 2 2002
Stephen M Strakowski
The authors reviewed magnetic resonance imaging volumetric imaging results in major mood disorders, particularly comparing similarities and differences from studies of bipolar disorder and unipolar major depression. Abnormalities of cerebral brain regions appear inconsistently in mood disorders and, when present, typically consist of decreased frontal or prefrontal cortical volumes in both unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. In contrast, subcortical and medial temporal abnormalities are more commonly observed and are different between these two major classes of affective illness. Specifically, whereas structural enlargement of the basal ganglia and amygdala have been observed in bipolar disorder, in unipolar depression, these structures appear to be smaller in patients than healthy subjects. These findings suggest that affective illnesses may share in common an underdeveloped or atrophied prefrontal region, leading to loss of cortical modulation of limbic emotional networks. The effect of this loss results in unipolar depression or cycling (mania with depression) depending on the abnormalities of the subcortical structures involved. The cerebellum may also play a role in the presentation of mood disorders. This hypothesis remains speculative as much more research is needed to specifically examine how morphometric brain abnormalities translate into the neurophysiologic deficits that produce mood disorders. [source]

Abnormal dose-response melatonin suppression by light in bipolar type I patients compared with healthy adult subjects

ACTA NEUROPSYCHIATRICA, Issue 5 2009
Karen T. Hallam
Objective: Among potential endophenotypes proposed for bipolar affective disorder focusing on circadian abnormalities associated with the illness has particularly high face validity. Melatonin sensitivity to light is one circadian endophenotype proposed as useful in bipolar disorder. The aim of this study was to investigate melatonin sensitivity to light over a range of light intensities in order to compare and contrast responses in bipolar I patients with those of healthy adult volunteers. Methods: The study included seven patients (4 females, 3 males) with bipolar I disorder and 34 control participants (22 females, 12 males) with no personal or family history of affective illness. Melatonin sensitivity to light was determined in all patients and participants across a range of light intensities (0, 200, 500 and 1000 lux). Results: The results indicated that patients showed melatonin super-sensitivity to light in comparison with controls, a response that was consistent across the entire light intensity range investigated. Conclusion: The study provides further evidence for a super sensitive response in bipolar I patients and suggests that its potential usefulness as an endophenotypic marker of the illness is deserving of further research. [source]

Age at onset in 3014 Sardinian bipolar and major depressive disorder patients

ACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA, Issue 6 2010
L. Tondo
Tondo L, Lepri B, Cruz N, Baldessarini RJ. Age at onset in 3014 Sardinian bipolar and major depressive disorder patients. Objective:, To test if onset age in major affective illnesses is younger in bipolar disorder (BPD) than unipolar-major depressive disorder (UP-MDD), and is a useful measure. Method:, We evaluated onset-age for DSM-IV-TR major illnesses in 3014 adults (18.5% BP-I, 12.5% BP-II, 69.0% UP-MDD; 64% women) at a mood-disorders center. Results:, Median and interquartile range (IQR) onset-age ranked: BP-I = 24 (19,32) < BP-II = 29 (20,40) < UP-MDD = 32 (23,47) years (P < 0.0001), and has remained stable since the 1970s. In BP-I patients, onset was latest for hypomania, and depression presented earlier than in BP-II or UP-MDD cases. Factors associated with younger onset included: i) being unmarried, ii) more education, iii) BPD-diagnosis, iv) family-history, v) being employed, vi) ever-suicidal, vii) substance-abuse and viii) ever-hospitalized. Onset-age distinguished BP-I from UP-MDD depressive onsets with weak sensitivity and specificity. Conclusion:, Onset age was younger among BPD than MDD patients, and very early onset may distinguish BPD vs. UP-MDD with depressive-onset. [source]

Lower suicide risk with long-term lithium treatment in major affective illness: a meta-analysis

ACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA, Issue 3 2001
Leonardo Tondo
Objective:,To compare suicide rates with vs. without long-term lithium treatment in major affective disorders. Method:,Broad searching yielded 22 studies providing suicide rates during lithium maintenance; 13 also provide rates without such treatment. Study quality was scored, between-study variance tested, and suicide rates on vs. off lithium examined by meta-analyses using random-effects regression methods to model risk ratios. Results:,Among 5647 patients (33,473 patient-years of risk) in 22 studies, suicide was 82% less frequent during lithium-treatment (0.159 vs. 0.875 deaths/100 patient-years). The computed risk-ratio in studies with rates on/off lithium was 8.85 (95% CI, 4.12,19.1; P<0.0001). Higher rates off-lithium were not accounted for by treatment-discontinuation. Conclusion:,Suicide risk was consistently lower during long-term treatment of major affective illnesses with lithium in all studies in the meta-analysis, including the few involving treatment-randomization. [source]

Volumetric MRI studies of mood disorders: do they distinguish unipolar and bipolar disorder?

BIPOLAR DISORDERS, Issue 2 2002
Stephen M Strakowski
The authors reviewed magnetic resonance imaging volumetric imaging results in major mood disorders, particularly comparing similarities and differences from studies of bipolar disorder and unipolar major depression. Abnormalities of cerebral brain regions appear inconsistently in mood disorders and, when present, typically consist of decreased frontal or prefrontal cortical volumes in both unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. In contrast, subcortical and medial temporal abnormalities are more commonly observed and are different between these two major classes of affective illness. Specifically, whereas structural enlargement of the basal ganglia and amygdala have been observed in bipolar disorder, in unipolar depression, these structures appear to be smaller in patients than healthy subjects. These findings suggest that affective illnesses may share in common an underdeveloped or atrophied prefrontal region, leading to loss of cortical modulation of limbic emotional networks. The effect of this loss results in unipolar depression or cycling (mania with depression) depending on the abnormalities of the subcortical structures involved. The cerebellum may also play a role in the presentation of mood disorders. This hypothesis remains speculative as much more research is needed to specifically examine how morphometric brain abnormalities translate into the neurophysiologic deficits that produce mood disorders. [source]