Empowering understanding: navigating consent to ketamine treatment in adolescent mental health.

The rising prevalence of mental health disorders in adolescents, compounded by treatment resistance, underscores the need for innovative interventions. Ketamine, recognized for its rapid antidepressant and anti-suicidal effects in adults, has recently emerged as a potential treatment for adolescents with treatment-resistant depression and suicidality. This paper aims to highlight key elements of the informed consent process, including obtaining parental consent and adolescent assent, and discussing the nature of ketamine treatment, its benefits, and potential risks. Obtaining informed consent for ketamine treatment in this demographic poses unique challenges. During the informed consent process, clinicians should balance an adolescent's growing autonomy with parental consent and address the distinct features of treatment, including ketamine's potential to induce psychedelic-like effects. Additionally, clinicians should highlight the "off-label" use in this population and the uncertainty inherent to treatment at this time, including the lack of data on repeated ketamine exposure on the developing brain. This paper also addresses challenging scenarios related to informed consent for this treatment, such as instances when parents are willing to consent but the adolescent refuses. Alternative treatment strategies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are also considered. In conclusion, while an emerging body of evidence suggests that ketamine shows potential for the acute treatment of adolescents with severe depression and suicidality, adherence to informed consent principles is paramount to ensure best clinical practices and uphold ethical standards amidst the current landscape of ongoing research.

From the Blood-Brain Barrier to Childhood Development: A Case of Acute-Onset Psychosis and Cognitive Impairment Attributed to Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in an Adolescent Female.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: After participating in this CME activity, the clinician will be better able to:• Interpret classifications of neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus (NPSLE).• Identify determining factors of neuropsychiatric events.• Analyze current evidence regarding disease pathways for NPSLE.

A Potential Complication of COVID-19: A Case of Non-Traumatic Rhabdomyolisis.

Rhabdomyolysis can present as a clinical challenge due to broad etiological spectrum, non-specific symptomatology and numerous systemic complications including acute kidney injury. Emerging evidence suggests that rhabdomyolysis may be an associated early or late complication of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. We present a case of a 55-year-old woman with recent COVID-19 pneumonia who was later found to have non-traumatic rhabdomyolysis incidentally captured on COVID-19 screening labs.

Hierarchical processing of visual stimuli in nephropathic cystinosis.

Previous studies have shown that individuals with cystinosis may exhibit difficulty with visuospatial tasks. Global and local (hierarchical) processing are specific types of visuospatial tasks mediated by the right and left parietal lobes respectively. The study objective was to determine whether individuals with cystinosis and carriers of the cystinosin gene mutation show deficits in global and/or local processing. The study included 48 children (32 controls, 16 cystinosis) and 56 adults (25 controls, 25 carriers, and 6 cystinosis). Participants were instructed to replicate 10 hierarchical stimuli to assess global-local processing. The primary outcome measure was mean global and local performance on the hierarchical stimuli task between subgroups. Error subtypes were included to further assess each image. Compared to the control subgroups, adult and child cystinosis patients as well adult carriers demonstrated significant deficits in the global processing of a hierarchical stimulus against a background of unimpaired local processing. Child cystinosis patients performed significantly more poorly than controls on all error subtypes except local shape distortion. Adult cystinosis patients and carriers made significantly more global shape distortion errors than the controls. Our study shows that the cognitive profile documented in cystinosis patients and carriers includes significant difficulties with the global processing of an image. Results of the carrier population are important since they suggest that the cognitive impairments observed in patients cannot be attributed to symptomatic manifestations of the disease. Instead, the global processing deficits observed provide insight into the potential role of the cystinosin gene mutation on neurodevelopmental differences seen in these individuals.

The Dynamic Duo: Combining noninvasive brain stimulation with cognitive interventions.

Pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS)1 each show efficacy in the treatment of psychiatric disorders; however, more efficacious interventions are needed as reflected by an overall unmet need in mental health care. While each modality has typically been studied and developed as a monotherapy, in practice they are typically used in combination. Research has begun to emerge studying the potential synergistic actions of multi-modal, combination therapies. For example, NIBS combined with rehabilitation strategies have demonstrated some success for speech and motor rehabilitation in stroke patients. In this review we present evidence suggesting that combining NIBS with targeted, cognitive interventions offers a potentially powerful new approach to treating neuropsychiatric disorders. Here we focus on NIBS studies using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)2 and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)3 given that these modalities are relatively safe, noninvasive, and can be performed simultaneously with neurocognitive interventions. We review the concept of "state dependent" effects of NIBS and highlight how simultaneous or sequential cognitive interventions could help optimize NIBS therapy by providing further control of ongoing neural activity in targeted neural networks. This review spans a range of neuropsychiatric disorders including major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, generalized anxiety, and autism. For each disorder, we emphasize neuroanatomical circuitry that could be engaged with combination therapy and critically discuss the literature that has begun to emerge. Finally, we present possible underlying mechanisms and propose future research strategies that may further refine the potential of combination therapies.