Assessment of Suicide Risk in Patients with Depressive Episodes Due to Affective Disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Pilot Comparative Study.

This study assessed suicidal risk in patients suffering from non-psychotic depressive disorders within various clinical and nosological forms (F31-F34 mood disorders and F60.31-emotionally unstable personality disorder). Clinical and psychological features were presented, as well as predictors of suicidal risk in patients of these groups. We performed a comparative analysis of the anxiety and depression level, the level of mental pain, fear of death and the severity of anti-suicidal motives in patients with affective disorders and borderline personality disorder (BPD). Based on the results, 100% of patients in these clinical nosological groups were found to have a high level of suicidal risk. Patients with affective disorders have weak anti-suicidal motives and are not fully aware of the consequences of their own death. Patients with BPD have a higher suicidal risk than patients with affective disorders; they are characterized by less pronounced social orientation, demonstrativeness, self-centeredness, less pronounced levels of anxiety and fear of death.

On the issue of choosing psychodiagnostic methods of measuring and scoring of cognitive deficit in case of schizophrenia.

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES: The article is dedicated to the search of more accurate psychodiagnostic methods and methods of evaluation that can help to define the degree of manifestation of cognitive deficiency among patients suffering from various schizophrenic disorders. The notions of cognitive deficiency and cognitive profile are analysed; we understand them as the correlation between intact and damaged components of cognitive processes and their diagrammatic representation. The authors prove that it is essential to provide a detailed scale of cognitive deficiencies detectable in case of schizophrenic disorders and to design universal algorithms that could translate the results of traditional content analysis of cognitive disorders into quantitative indicators. The article is based on the authors' experiments. We examined 128 patients, among whom 76 were suffering from paranoid schizophrenia (F20 according to ICD) and 52 were suffering from schizotypal disorder (F21 according to ICD). METHOD: In evaluation of cognitive deficiency, we used both traditional methods devised in Russia and foreign tests that are seldom used by medical psychologists in their daily practice. We have analysed the difference in doing the cognitive tests between the groups of patients with different forms of schizophrenia and also suffering from it for different periods (up to 5 y and more than 5 y). RESULTS: On the basis of the quantitative indicators, a cognitive profile of each particular illness was compiled. As a result, we have defined different varieties of cognitive deficiency depending on the symptoms and dynamics of the disease. CONCLUSION: The authors have provided a detailed description of the structure and dynamics of the cognitive deficiency in case of different forms of schizophrenia and compiled cognitive profiles based on those data.