• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.179-186
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• 2013

Objectives This study is designed to compare the clinical characteristics of patients with early onset schizophrenia to those of adult onset schizophrenia patients in first episode. Methods Authors reviewed medical records of 16 early-onset schizophrenia patients and 22 adult-onset schizophrenia patients who had been admitted in the psychiatric ward and diagnosed as schizophrenia according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth Edition (DSM-IV) at Eulji University Hospital during 2004-2008. Socio-demographic data and clinical characteristics such as duration between onset and active phase, number of significant positive and negative symptoms, positive and negative symptom scores of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) scores, duration from onset to admission, duration of admission, and equivalent dose of antipsychotics were reviewed. These clinical characteristics of early-onset group were compared to those of adult-onset group. Correlation between age of onset and other clinical characteristics was also analyzed. Results Early-onset group showed more insidious onset pattern and had longer duration of hospitalization than adult-onset group. Early onset group also exhibited more negative symptoms, higher negative symptom scores, and higher CGI-S scores than adult-onset group after treatment. However, there were no significant differences in family history of psychosis, positive symptom frequency at discharge and equivalent dose of antipsychotics between two groups. Conclusions This study revealed that patients with early-onset schizophrenia exhibited more insidious onset, more negative symptoms, and more severe symptoms than those with adult-onset schizophrenia after treatment.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2011

Objective : This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in schizophrenia, and the relationship among OCD, severity of psychopathology, and social function in stable patients with chronic schizophrenia. Methods : We interviewed 138 symptom-stable inpatients who had been on a constant dose of antipsychotics for at least 1 month prior and diagnosed as chronic schizophrenia. Subsequently, patients were classified according to the existence of OCD as investigated using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders (SCID-I) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Further, all clinical and demographic data was investigated. To investigate potential interrelationships, the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Korea-Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (K-PANSS), and the Korean Personal and Social Performance (K-PSP) were used. An independent ttest and Chi-square test were used to compare groups and a Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between the Y-BOCS and other clinical rating scales. Results : The prevalence of OCD in schizophrenia patients was 18.1%. Patients with schizophrenia and OCD exhibited significantly earlier onset of schizophrenia, more severe psychiatric symptoms, and lower personal and social performance ability as compared to those without OCD. There was no significant relationship among Y-BOCS, K-PANSS, and K-PSP. Conclusion : We found that comorbid OCD was relatively more frequent in patients with schizophrenia. An investigation involving larger samples of schizophrenia patients with OCD with respect to social function and thus, the effect on quality of life is required.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.141-147
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• 2017

Objective : This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between comorbid obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and quality of life in stable patients with schizophrenia. Methods : We interviewed 162 symptom-stable inpatients who have been on a constant dose of antipsychotics for at least 3 months prior and diagnosed as chronic schizophrenia. Subsequently, patients were classified according to the existence of OCD as evaluated using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV). Further, all clinical and demographic data were collected and evaluated. To investigate potential interrelationships, the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Korea-Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (K-PANSS), Korean Modification of the Scale to Measure Subjective Well-Being under Neuroleptic Treatment (KmSWN) and Korean Version Quality of Life Scale (K-QOLS) were performed. Independent t-test and Chi-square test were used to compare groups and regression analysis was done to assess the relationship between the Y-BOCS and quality of life. Results : Schizophrenia patients with OCD showed significantly earlier onset of schizophrenia, more severe psychiatric symptoms and lower quality of life, compared to those without comorbid OCD. OCD might be associated with lower quality of life in schizophrenia. Conclusion : Schizophrenia patients with OCD showed lower quality of life than those without OCD. In the treatment for schizophrenia, evaluation of OCD might be needed to improve their quality of life and social function.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.122-128
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• 2007

Objectives : The aim of this study was to investigate relationships between psychotic symptoms and cognitive functions in schizophrenia. Methods : The study group was composed of 36 schizophrenic patients. Positive, negative, and disorganization symptoms were assessed using the PANSS. Verbal, visuospatial, attention, memory, and executive functions were assessed using a battery of cognitive tests. Results : Correlation analysis between symptom vs. cognitive measures showed that (a) positive symptoms were significantly correlated with no cognitive measures, (b) negative symptoms were significantly correlated with all cognitive measures, and (c) disorganization symptoms were significantly correlated with executive and memory measures. Correlation analyses between symptom vs. cognitive factors showed that negative-disorganization factor is significantly correlated with executive-memory factor. Conclusion : Significant relationships were confined mostly to frontal symptoms vs. frontal cognitive functions. Thus, the relationships may be mediated mainly by variations in severity of frontal pathology among patients.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.58-64
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• 2020

Objectives: In this study, we conducted an exploratory analysis of the current media trends on schizophrenia using text-mining methods. Methods: First, web-crawling techniques extracted text data from 575 news articles in 10 major newspapers between 2018 and 2019, which were selected by searching "schizophrenia" in the Naver News. We had developed document-term matrix (DTM) and/or term-document matrix (TDM) through pre-processing techniques. Through the use of DTM and TDM, frequency analysis, co-occurrence network analysis, and topic model analysis were conducted. Results: Frequency analysis showed that keywords such as "police," "mental illness," "admission," "patient," "crime," "apartment," "lethal weapon," "treatment," "Jinju," and "residents" were frequently mentioned in news articles on schizophrenia. Within the article text, many of these keywords were highly correlated with the term "schizophrenia" and were also interconnected with each other in the co-occurrence network. The latent Dirichlet allocation model presented 10 topics comprising a combination of keywords: "police-Jinju," "hospital-admission," "research-finding," "care-center," "schizophrenia-symptom," "society-issue," "family-mind," "woman-school," and "disabled-facilities." Conclusion: The results of the present study highlight that in recent years, the media has been reporting violence in patients with schizophrenia, thereby raising an important issue of hospitalization and community management of patients with schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2019

Objectives Disrupted integrities of the fornix and stria terminalis have been suggested in schizophrenia. However, very few studies have focused on the fornix and stria terminalis comparing first-episode schizophrenia (FESZ), chronic schizophrenia (CS), and healthy controls (HCs) with the application of diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) technique. The objective of this study is to compare the connectivity of the fornix and stria terminalis among FESZ, CS, and HCs. Methods We included the 44 FESZ patients, 39 CS patients and 20 HCs in this study. Voxel-wise statistical analysis of the fractional anisotropy (FA) data was performed using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics to analyze the connectivity of fornix and stria terminalis. In addition, the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) were used to evaluate clinical symptom severities. Results There were no significant differences between the FESZ, CS, and HCs in age, sex, education years. The SAPS and SANS scores of the schizophrenia groups showed no significant differences. FA values of the right fornix cres/stria terminalis in the CS group were significantly lower than those in FESZ and HCs. There were no significant differences of FA values of the right fornix cres/stria terminalis between the FESZ and the HCs. Pearson correlation analyses revealed that significant correlation between FA values of the right fornix cres/stria terminalies of the the FESZ group and positive, negative symptom scales, and FA values of the right fornix cres/stria terminalis of the CS group and negative symptom scales. Conclusions This study shows that FA values of the fornix and stria terminalis in the CS were lower than in the FESZ and the HCs. These results suggest that the fornix and stria terminalis can play a role in pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Thus current study can broaden our understanding of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.38-44
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• 2020

Objectives: Dehospitalization of long-term inpatients with schizophrenia can be difficult because of complex factors such as chronic symptoms and low family and social support. The aim of this study was to identify factors related to dehospitalization and readmission of long-term inpatients with schizophrenia. Methods: This retrospective study reviewed the medical records of patients discharged from a psychiatric hospital in Yongin, South Korea, from February 1, 2016, to July 31, 2017. Patients who were hospitalized for over 3 months were divided into two groups: readmission (n=47) and dehospitalization (n=55). Differences in sociodemographic and clinical factors were analyzed between the two groups. Results: Regarding sociodemographic characteristics, female sex, familylessness, discharge to nursing homes, and discharge after symptom improvement were more prevalent in the dehospitalization group, whereas male sex, having a sibling as next of kin, and discharge because of other problems were more prevalent in the readmission group. Among clinical characteristics, hospital stay was longer in the readmission group. Conclusion: In this study, patients without a family showed a tendency to not be readmitted when they were discharged to nursing homes after symptom improvement. Expansion of social welfare support may encourage dehospitalization of long-term inpatients with schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Pharmacognosy
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.97-103
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• 2013

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder and characterized by positive symptom (i.e., delusions, hallucinations), negative symptom (i.e., lack of emotion, social withdrawal), and cognitive impairment. Previously, we reported that the ethanolic extract of Prunella vulgaris var. lilacina attenuated the MK-801-induced schizophrenia-like behaviors such as prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficits and cognitive impairment in mice. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether danshensu isolated from P. vulgaris var. lilacina attenuates MK-801-induced sensorimotor gating dysfunction (PPI deficits), hyperlocomotion, and memory impairment in mice. Acute administration of danshensu (1, 3, or 10 mg/kg) significantly ameliorated the MK-801-induced PPI deficits in the acoustic startle response test. We also observed that the impaired recognition memory induced by MK-801 was attenuated by danshensu (1 mg/kg) in the novel object recognition test. However, danshensu failed to reverse the MK-801-induced hyperlocomotion in the open-field test. Collectively, the present results indicate danshensu would be an active agent for treating neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.211-218
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• 2012

Objectives Body image distortion is found in eating disorder and obesity and there are some evidence that schizophrenia is associated with body image distortion. This study sought to find whether schizophrenic patients report more body image distortion than healthy individuals and whether it is related with symptomatology. Methods A total of 88 inpatients with schizophrenia and 88 healthy controls were recruited. Weight, height, and body image accuracy were assessed in all participants, and assessment of mood, psychotic symptom severity and self-esteem, and personal and social performance scale were conducted. Results The patients with schizophrenia had higher Body Mass Index (p < 0. 001) and underestimated their body size more than controls (26.14% vs. 5.13%, p < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis showed that lower depressive symptoms and higher scores of general psychopathology predicted underestimation of body size. Conclusion Weight gain and metabolic syndrome are common adverse events of pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia. Thus, underestimation of body size among patients with schizophrenia may interfere with effort to lose weight or seek weight reduction programs. Clinicians need to consider possible unterestimation of underestimation of body size in patients whose general symptomatology is severe.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.510-519
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• 2022

This study aims to examine how delusions and hallucinations are expressed as representative symptoms of schizophrenia in the two films and . We look at how the two films show the appearance and overall image of the schizophrenic patient, the emotional expression of the schizophrenic patient, and how family and colleagues express the perceptions of the schizophrenic patient's symptoms. Finally, we will examine the perception of treatment measures for schizophrenia. Comprehensively, through this process, the schizophrenia symptoms expressed in the two films will have some effect on social perception of schizophrenia and the social implications of therapeutic intervention for schizophrenia recovery.