Participants were 65 youth referred by community mental health centers and psychiatric clinics around Seoul and Kyongki-Do province. Among them, only 41 participants (31 male, 10 female, mean age 15 ± 3.6 years) fit our SWY criteria. In addition, 248 middle and high school students in Seoul were recruited as a baseline control group. Caseworkers interviewed the SWY participants and their parents in their homes, using our structured interview manual and a number of psychiatric scales. Caseworkers also approached the participants therapeutically.

Participants' Depression Inventory, Trait Anxiety Inventory, Social Anxiety Scale, and Internet Addiction Scale scores were significantly higher than those of baseline controls. Participants' mean number of psychotherapeutic sessions was 2.8, and the mean number of parental interview sessions was 3.4. After the therapeutic sessions, Global Assessment Functioning scores and social activities had improved somewhat in 68.3% of participants.

These findings suggest that SWY is a complex phenomenon, so an individual psychopathologic process is very important for treatment. The most difficult problem in SWY treatment was therapeutic access. Hence, the home visit approach with a structured manual may be a good gateway for solving this problem.

The subjects were 16 children with ASD aged between 8 and 14 years and 16 age-matched healthy control children. Oxygenated hemoglobin concentration was measured in the subject's prefrontal brain region on NIRS during tasks expressing a person's mental state (MS task) and expressing an object's characteristics (OC task).

There was a significant main effect of group (ASD vs control), with the control group having more activity than the ASD group. But there was no significant main effect of task (MS task vs OC task) or hemisphere (right vs left). Significant interactions of task and group were found, with the control group showing more activity than the ASD group during the MS task relative to the OC task.

NIRS showed that there was lower activity in the prefrontal brain area when children with ASD performed MS tasks. Therefore, clinicians might be able to use NIRS and these tasks for conveniently detecting brain dysfunction in children with ASD related to inferring mental states, in the clinical setting.

A repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) paradigm was used to induce cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects (n = 27; age range, 21–36 years), who were divided into two different groups (high/low anxiety; State–Trait Anxiety Inventory), were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding phase (lists composed of positive and negative emotional words); and a retrieval phase (old stimuli and new stimuli to be recognized). Moreover, new stimuli (distractors) semantically related or unrelated to the old stimuli were used to test a possible interference effect induced by the semantic association.

rTMS over the left DLPFC affects memory retrieval. High-anxiety subjects benefited in greater measure from frontal left stimulation with a reduced negative bias (increased accuracy and reduced response time for the positive stimuli) and a significant increased performance for the semantically related distractors (reduced interference effect).

Left DLPFC activation favors the memory retrieval of positive emotional information and might limit the unbalance effect induced by right hemispheric superiority in high levels of anxiety.

In this prospective, open-label, 6-week study, 150 patients with major depressive disorder who had previously not responded or partially responded to SSRI monotherapy were recruited. Tianeptine was given in combination with an SSRI for 6 weeks.

Significant improvements were observed in the mean scores of the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), and Clinical Global Impression–Severity (CGI-S). The change in the mean HDRS, MADRS, and CGI-S scores was significant from week 1. The response rates were 64.7% (HDRS) and 68.7% (MADRS), and the remission rates were 34.0% (HDRS) and 42.0% (MADRS) at week 6. Thirty-six patients (24.0%) reported adverse events that were determined by the investigator to be related to one of the study drugs. The tianeptine and SSRI combination was generally well-tolerated.

A combination strategy with tianeptine may be an effective and well-tolerated tool for patients who have failed to adequately respond to SSRI monotherapy.

Twenty-six subjects with schizophrenia, 26 subjects with schizophrenia-related disorders, and 26 healthy controls were recruited. The Human Th1/Th2 Cytokine Cytometric Bead Array Kit-II was utilized to assess serum Th1/Th2 cytokines and ratios simultaneously. MANOVA was used to detect differences among the three diagnostic groups in distinct Th1/Th2 cytokines/ratios. Pearson/Spearman correlations were used to examine the relationships between distinct Th1/Th2 cytokines/ratios and clinical/psychopathological data in schizophrenia.

Interferon (IFN)-γ/interleukin (IL)-4, IFN-γ/IL-10, IL-2/IL-4, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α/IL-4 ratios were significantly decreased in schizophrenia, but not in schizophrenia-related disorders compared to healthy controls. IFN-γ/IL-4 and IFN-γ/IL-10 in schizophrenia subjects positively correlated with age, but not in schizophrenia-related disorder subjects or in healthy controls.

A clear Th2 shift was observed in schizophrenia, but not in schizophrenia-related disorders. The Th2 shift in schizophrenia appeared to be an aberrant developmental phenomenon.

Analysis was conducted on cognitive performance prediction discrepancies in a sample of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and a matched comparison group.

Patients rated their cognitive functioning more highly than their performance, but their overall self-reports were lower than the overall self-reports of the comparison group. AD patients performed significantly lower than their predicted scores in all Dementia Rating Scale (DRS) domains, in contrast to comparison participants, who did not consistently perform significantly lower across domains. All unawareness scores were moderately inter-correlated, except for memory, and all unawareness scores with the exception of memory were correlated with overall neuropsychological functioning.

A methodological and conceptual difficulty has been identified, and this raises the issue of the generalizability of studies with a focus on memory unawareness. The method proposed seems a good tool to assess the relationships between unawareness and several different aspects of cognitive functioning, in particular executive functioning.

Twenty-four patients with PD and 20 healthy controls were tested with a facial emotional expression recognition task involving four basic emotions (i.e. happiness, sadness, anger, and fear). Emotion recognition measures included the recognition threshold, response time, response time of correctly classified emotions (response time_crt), and recognition error. An average of all four emotions for each emotion recognition measure was compared between the two groups and then a comparison of recognition measures for each specific emotion was conducted. The correlations between severity of the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Panic Disorder Severity Scale with emotion recognition indices were also analyzed.

Average recognition threshold was significantly higher in the PD group compared to the control group. In the PD group, there was a non-significant trend of increase in the emotion recognition threshold for fear and the response time for anger compared with the control group. In the correlation analysis, higher trait anxiety was associated with slower response time_crt for anger and a higher BDI score was associated with slower response times and response time_crt for happiness and anger.

This study suggests that symptom severity of PD might be associated with impairment in emotion processing of threat-related facial expressions.

Depression severity was assessed in 60 patients by a clinician and psychologists using HAM-D. Scoring by the IVR program was conducted on the same and the following days. Test–retest reliability, internal consistency, and concurrent validity for total HAM-D scores were examined by calculating intraclass correlation coefficient, Cronbach's alpha, and Pearson's correlation coefficient. Inter-rater consistency for each HAM-D item was examined by Cohen's kappa.

Test–retest reliability of the IVR program was high (intraclass correlation coefficient: 0.93). Internal consistency of each total score obtained by the clinician, psychologists, and IVR program was high (Cronbach's alpha: 0.77, 0.79, 0.78, and 0.83). Regarding concurrent validity, correlation coefficients between total scores obtained by the clinician versus IVR and that by the clinician versus psychologists were high (0.81 and 0.93). The HAM-D total score rated by the clinician was 3 points lower than that of IVR. Inter-rater consistency for each HAM-D item evaluated by the clinician versus IVR was estimated to be fair (Cohen's kappa coefficient: 0.02–0.50).

Our results suggest that the Japanese IVR HAM-D program is reliable and valid to assess 17-item HAM-D total score in Japanese depressive patients. However, the current program tends to overestimate depression severity, and the score of each item did not always show high agreement with clinician's rating, which warrants further improvement in the program.

Six hundred and thirty-five patients with acute ischemic stroke in Hong Kong were recruited. Serum total bilirubin, alanine transaminase and alkaline phosphatase levels were measured in all patients during their hospital stay. A psychiatrist gave the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV to all patients 3 months after the index stroke, with 61 patients diagnosed with PSD: 27 with major depression, 24 with minor depression and 10 with dysthymia.

In the full sample, the 25%, 50% and 75% percentile bilirubin levels were 7.0, 10.0 and 14.0 μmol/L, respectively. Significant differences were found between the PSD and non-PSD groups in terms of bilirubin level (P = 0.006). In post-hoc comparisons, the proportion of patients with bilirubin ≥14.1 μmol/L was significantly higher in the PSD group (37.7% vs 19.7%, P = 0.001). In the final regression model, bilirubin level (≥14.1 μmol/L) remained a significant independent predictor of PSD, with an odds ratio of 2.4.

High bilirubin level is associated with PSD. Further investigations are needed to clarify the underlying pathophysiological link between bilirubin level and PSD.

The subjects were 126 depressed inpatients who received 20 mg/day fluoxetine for 6 weeks. Symptom severity was assessed using the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17). Response was defined as a reduction of 50% or more of the HAMD-17. Remission was defined as a score of ≤7 of the HAMD-17. At weeks 1, 2, 3 and 4, the percentages of HAMD-17 score reduction, the percentages of mood cluster score reduction, HAMD-17 scores, and mood cluster scores were regarded as potential predictors. The receiver operating characteristic curve was applied to determine the cut-off point of predictors at weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4.

One-hundred and seven patients completed the 6-week trial. At weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4, percentages of HAMD-17 score reduction or HAMD-17 scores were the best predictors of responder or remitters, respectively. Using the percentage of HAMD-17 score reduction at each assessment as a predictor of response generated a larger area under the curve than other predictors. Conversely, applying the absolute HAMD-17 score at each assessment as a predictor of remission had the largest area under the curve.

Applying percentage of reduction in depression severity during the early weeks of treatment can predict response, and it is reasonable to apply depression severity to predict remission.

Affective ToM was assessed with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task in 35 PD patients and 35 healthy controls. Depression, global cognitive status and executive functioning were also evaluated. Patients were distinguished in early PD and moderate PD according to their scores in the Hoehn and Yahr Staging Scale.

PD patients had more difficulties with affective ToM than healthy controls, also controlling for other variables that resulted in association with this ability. Early PD patients outperformed moderate PD patients, but this difference did not reach statistical significance when controlling for other variables.

These findings confirmed that affective ToM may be impaired in PD, but any conclusion can be made on the effect of disease progression on this ability of social cognition. Therefore, longitudinal studies are needed to investigate this potential effect.