The nature of anhedonia and avolition in patients with first-episode schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Patients with schizophrenia have intact ability to experience emotion, but empirical evidence suggests that they fail to translate emotional salience into effortful behaviour. Previous research in patients with chronic schizophrenia suggests that working memory is important in integrating emotion and behaviour. This study aimed to examine avolition and anhedonia in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and clarify the role of working memory in emotion-behaviour coupling. METHOD: We recruited 72 participants with first-episode schizophrenia and 61 healthy controls, and used a validated emotion-inducing behavioural paradigm to measure participants' affective experiences and how experienced emotion coupled with behaviour. Participants were given the opportunity to expend effort to increase or decrease their exposure to emotion-inducing photographs. Participants with schizophrenia having poor working memory were compared with those with intact working memory in their liking and emotion-behaviour coupling. RESULTS: Patients with first-episode schizophrenia experienced intact 'in-the-moment' emotion, but their emotion was less predictive of the effort expended, compared with controls. The emotion-behaviour coupling was significantly weaker in patients with schizophrenia with poor working memory than in those with intact working memory. However, compared with controls, patients with intact working also showed substantial emotion-behaviour decoupling. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide strong evidence for emotion-behaviour decoupling in first-episode schizophrenia. Although working memory deficits contribute to defective translation of liking into effortful behaviour, schizophrenia alone affects emotion-behaviour coupling.

Patients with bipolar disorders share similar but attenuated prospective memory impairments with patients with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to carry out an intended action in the future. PM is consistently found to be impaired in individuals with schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may represent conditions along a continuum, and share similar neurocognitive and genetic architecture. This study aimed to compare the nature and extent of PM impairment in individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. METHOD: Participants were 38 out-patients with schizophrenia and 40 out-patients with bipolar disorder in an early psychosis intervention programme, and 37 healthy controls. Time-, event- and activity-based PMs were assessed using a dual-task laboratory paradigm. Self-reported PM performance was gauged using the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with intelligence quotient (IQ) and education included as covariates, was used to examine group difference on various types of PM. Repeated measures of ANCOVA were used to examine the group × PM type interaction effect. Correspondence between laboratory and self-reported PM measures was examined using correlational analysis. RESULTS: The group × PM type interaction effect was not significant, but the main effect of group was significant. Patients with schizophrenia and patients with bipolar disorder both performed more poorly than healthy participants in PM. The two clinical groups did not significantly differ in PM. Laboratory and self-reported PM measures did not correlate significantly with each other. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with bipolar disorder shared a similar PM impairment with those with schizophrenia. Findings of this study extended the similarity in neurocognitive impairments between the two psychiatric disorders to PM.

Multi-disciplinary Psychiatric Case Management Model in Hong Kong: Service Coverage and Risk Stratification.

INTRODUCTION: Community mental health services in Hong Kong follow a multi-disciplinary case management model. We investigated whether at-risk patients received higher intensity care and whether risk stratification concorded between personalised care programmes and integrated community centres of mental wellness. METHODS: Records of all patients in North Lantau and Mongkok districts who received case management services (from personalised care programmes and/or integrated community centres of mental wellness) between 1 April 2014 and 30 June 2015 were reviewed. Patients' levels of risk, demographic data, and clinical characteristics were analysed. RESULTS: Identified at-risk patients received high-intensity care from personalised care programmes and integrated community centres of mental wellness. Case management was coordinated between the Hospital Authority and non-government organisations. However, risk stratification did not correlate with assessment rating scores of psychopathology or psychosocial functioning. Assessment rating scales appear unsuitable to provide any optimal cut-off scores for risk stratification. CONCLUSIONS: Risk stratification should be a structured clinical judgement based on comprehensive and accurate information of protective and risk factors, rather than relying on cut-off scores of assessment rating scales.

A questionnaire survey on attitudes and understanding towards mental disorders.

OBJECTIVES. To obtain information about basic knowledge towards mental disorders and to evaluate public attitudes towards mental disorders in the Hong Kong Chinese population. METHODS. Questionnaires which collected basic demographic information, opinions about potential stigmas and myths, and knowledge on case vignettes depicting fictional characters with symptoms of mental illness were delivered to subjects in a secondary school, 2 homes for the elderly, a private housing estate, and a public housing estate in Hong Kong. RESULTS. Completed questionnaires were collected from 1035 subjects. In general, the participants' acceptance of mental illness was good. Regular contacts with such patients were associated with better knowledge (t = -2.71, p < 0.01) and better acceptance (t = 2.77, p < 0.01) of mental illness. Younger participants aged 15 to 19 years had a lower level of knowledge about mental health problems compared with other age-groups (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS. Personal contact with people with mental illness may help to improve knowledge and acceptance. Younger people in secondary school should be the target and prioritised group for mental health education. Apart from the delivery of mental health knowledge, strategies to increase social contact of the public with people having mental illness could be considered in the design and implementation of anti-stigma programmes.