Astrid M. Kamperman

Erasmus MC | Erasmus MC · Department of Psychiatry

Objective: Women with a history of bipolar disorder, postpartum psychosis, or both are at high risk for postpartum relapse. The aim of this meta-analysis was to estimate the risk of postpartum relapse in these three patient groups. Method: A systematic literature search was conducted in all public medical electronic databases, adhering to the PR...

Importance Compulsory admissions, defined as admissions against the will of the patient (according to local judicial procedures), have a strong effect on psychiatric patients. In several Western countries, the rate of such admissions is tending to rise. Its reduction is urgently needed. Objective To establish which interventions effectively reduce...

Attachment instruments vary substantially in practicability of administration, employment of categorical versus dimensional scoring, quality of scales, and applicability to different attachment figures. The Attachment Network Q-sort (ANQ) is a self-report, quasi-qualitative instrument that discriminates relationship-specific attachment styles for m...

Objective: There is limited information on the longitudinal disease course after first-onset postpartum psychosis (PP). Some women will experience severe affective episodes outside the postpartum period, while for other women their vulnerability to mania and psychosis may be restricted to the postpartum period. This meta-analysis estimates the ris...

A robust association has been reported between childhood adverse life events (ALEs) and risky substance use in adolescence. It remains unclear, however, what the impact of type and timing of these ALEs is. We investigated the association between ALEs and substance use in adolescents. ALEs were operationalized as broad (e.g., moving, parental divorc...

Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) is a psychosocial intervention supporting people with serious mental illnesses. In this study, 15 IMR groups were assessed for fidelity and clinician competency to establish the implementation level of all IMR elements and explore complementarity of the IMR Treatment Integrity Scale (IT-IS) to the standard IMR...

Background: Alterations in stress regulation and function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during infancy may be a risk factor for the development of psychopathology later in life. Maternal childhood trauma, depression, anxiety and stressful life events are individually associated with HPA axis dysregulation. Less is known about th...

Objective: High relapse rates are observed after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for major depression. Identifying patients who are at increased risk for relapse to intensify their treatment regimen post-ECT might reduce relapse rates. We aimed to determine clinical characteristics that are associated with relapse within two years after successful...

We aimed to examine determinants of criminal victimization (i.e. both personal and property crime victimization) in outpatients with severe mental illness.Data was collected using a multisite epidemiological survey including a random sample of 956 adult outpatients with SMI. Data on 12-month victimization prevalence and frequency were obtained usin...

Objective: Lithium is often continued during pregnancy to reduce the risk of perinatal mood episodes for women with bipolar disorder. However, little is known about the effect of intrauterine lithium exposure on brain development. The aim of this study was to investigate brain structure in children after intrauterine exposure to lithium. Methods:...

Background – A robust association has been reported between childhood adverse life events (ALEs) and risky substance use in adolescence. It remains unclear, however, what impact of severity and timing of these ALEs is.Aims – We investigated the association between ALEs and substance use in adolescents. ALEs were operationalized as broad (e.g., movi...

Introduction Complementary and alternative therapies (CATs) refer to a diverse range of approaches that can be used as add-on or an alternative to conventional therapies. While a number of individual studies and systematic reviews (SRs) or meta-analyses (MAs) have investigated the effectiveness of specific types of CATs to treat depressive symptoms...

Objective: Antipsychotics are increasingly prescribed in pregnancy, yet little is known about potential long-term developmental effects on children. In this study we investigated the effect of prenatal antipsychotic exposure on neurodevelopmental functioning in school-aged children. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional neurodevelopmental asse...

Purpose Assess postpartum depression and psychotic symptoms from three continents. Methods Compare numbers of women with depression and psychotic symptoms, mania with or without psychotic features, or transient non-affective psychosis and medication choice. Results The prevalence of postpartum depression and psychosis and treatment choice differe...

Importance: Emerging data suggest that more than two-thirds of premenstrual disorders (PMDs), including premenstrual syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, have symptom onset during the teen years. Adulthood adiposity has been associated with PMDs; however, the association with childhood and adolescent body size is unknown. Objective: To...

Although cross-sectional studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of adolescents, the effect of the pandemic on adolescents with pre-pandemic symptoms is unclear. We, therefore, tested the hypothesis that adolescents had increased emotional and behavioral problems during the lockdowns imposed during th...

Objective: There is limited evidence that adding an antidepressant to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), compared with ECT monotherapy, improves outcomes. We aimed to determine whether the addition of nortriptyline to ECT enhances its efficacy and prevents post-ECT relapse. Methods: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial...

Psychiatric patients are often victims of crime and discrimination and are often socially withdrawn. This has negative consequences for their health and recovery. We examined whether such discrimination mediates the association between victimization and social withdrawal, and whether these associations differ between men and women. We also determin...

Background Sexual abuse is a broad category of traumatic experiences that includes rape and any unwanted sexual contact with a body part or foreign object, whether penetrative, oral or otherwise. Although patients with mental illness have a higher risk of becoming victims of sexual abuse in adulthood, few studies investigate the proportion of male...

There have been inconsistent findings in the literature with respect to the efficacy of Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) in the psychosocial treatment of people with schizophrenia or other severe mental illnesses. This study aimed to comprehensively investigate the effectiveness of IMR, including the impact of completion and fidelity. In this...

Objective We aimed to investigate the outcome of postpartum psychosis over a four-year follow-up, and to identify potential clinical markers of mood/psychotic episodes outside of the postpartum period. Methods One hundred and six women with a diagnosis of first-onset mania or psychosis during the postpartum period were included in this prospective...

Objectives Lithium is an effective treatment for bipolar disorder, also during pregnancy to prevent the recurrence of episodes in the perinatal period. Little is known about the neuropsychological development of lithium-exposed offspring. The current study was designed to investigate neuropsychological functioning in lithium-exposed children with t...

Background. Maternal psychopathology is associated with altered HPA axis functioning in offspring. Most studies have focused on mildly affected populations, but less is known about the effect of severe maternal psychopathology. In our explorative study we investigated in a heterogenic sample of mothers with severe and long-lasting psychiatric disor...

Background: Women with bipolar I disorder are at high risk for severe episodes after childbirth, but there is no study that provides an overview on bipolar episode risk both during pregnancy and after childbirth, miscarriage and induced abortion. The aim of this study was to determine the episode risk during all pregnancy outcomes subdivided by fir...

Objective Although cross-sectional studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has negativelyaffected the mental health of adolescents, the effect of the pandemic on adolescents with pre-pandemicsymptoms is unclear. We therefore tested the hypothesis that adolescents had increased emotional andbehavioral problems during the lockdowns imposed duri...

Background: Sheltered housing is associated with quality-of-life improvements for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI). However, there are equivocal findings around safety outcomes related to this type of living condition. Aims: We aimed to investigate raw differences in prevalence and incidence of crime victimisation in sheltered housi...

Objective: We aimed to investigate the outcome of postpartum psychosis over a four-year follow-up, and to identify potential clinical markers of mood/psychotic episodes outside of the postpartum period. Methods: One hundred and six women with a diagnosis of first-onset mania or psychosis during the postpartum period were included in this prospectiv...

Despite increased prevalence of domestic violence and abuse (DVA), victimization through DVA often remains undetected in mental health care. To estimate the effectiveness of a system provider level training intervention by comparing the detection and referral rates of DVA of intervention community mental health (CMH) teams with rates in control CMH...

Background Maternal psychopathology during pregnancy is associated with negative outcomes in offspring. Increased placental transfer of maternal cortisol may contribute to mediate this association. Hair cortisol concentrations (HCCs) appear to be a good bio-marker of long-term prenatal stress exposure. Little is known about the associations betwee...

Objective: Several clinical variables assumed to be predictive of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) outcome in major depressive disorder show substantial interrelations. The current study tries to disentangle this interdependence to distill the most important predictors of treatment success to help improve patient-treatment matching. Methods: We con...

Objectives: Approximately 11%–13% of pregnant women suffer from depression. Bright light therapy (BLT) is a promising treatment, combining direct availability, sufficient efficacy, low costs and high safety for both mother and child. Here, we examined the effects of BLT on depression during pregnancy. Design: Randomised, double-blind controlled tr...

Rationale: Despite interventions to improve detection rates, domestic violence, and abuse (DVA) remains largely undetected by healthcare services. We therefore aimed to examine the acceptability, feasibility, and sustainability of an intervention aiming to improve DVA detection rates, which included a clear referral pathway (i.e., the BRAVE interve...

An adjuvant antidepressant enhances the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy for major depression. Tricyclic antidepressants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors/serotonin noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors and monoamine oxidase inhibitors showed the same effect size. However, the effect sizes of tricyclic antidepressants and monoamine oxidase...

Mother-to-infant bonding is important for long-term child development. The aim of this study was to investigate bonding in women admitted to a Mother and Baby Unit with postpartum depression (PD, n = 64) and postpartum psychosis (PP, n = 91). Participants completed the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ), the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale...

Recent studies have provided new data on the teratogenicity of lithium. Less is known about the risk of miscarriage after lithium use during pregnancy. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between lithium use during pregnancy and miscarriage. Participants were women with bipolar I disorder and one or more pregnancies, of which i...

Background: While antidepressant use during pregnancy is increasingly common, there is concern about the possible effects of in-utero antidepressant exposure on the child. Our objective was to examine whether there is a dose-effect of maternal serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI) during pregnancy on birth outcomes. Methods: Women between 12 and 1...

Background: Most studies of immune dysregulation in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders have focused on peripheral cytokines, but literature from non-perinatal mood disorders also implicates T-cell defects. We sought to characterize proportions of T-cell subtypes in women with postpartum depression. Materials and methods: We enrolled 21 women w...

Objective To analyze the relationships between insight, medication adherence, addiction, coping and social support—components of Illness Management and Recovery (IMR)—as determinants of clinical, functional and personal recovery in patients with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses. Our rationale lay in the interrelations between these c...

Objectives: Gastroesophageal reflux (GER), excessive crying, and constipation are common gastrointestinal symptoms in infancy of multifactorial origin in which psychosocial stress factors play an important role. The aims of this observational study were to investigate the presence of gastrointestinal symptoms in infants of mothers with or without...

Poor sleep quality during pregnancy is associated with both antepartum and postpartum depression and adverse birth outcomes. This study evaluated both objective and subjective sleep quality and the effects on the subsequent course of antepartum depressive symptoms in psychiatric patients. This observational explorative study was embedded in an ongo...

Objective To investigate whether early improvement, measured after two ECT sessions, is a good predictor of eventual remission in severely depressed inpatients receiving ECT. Method A prospective cohort study was performed that included 89 MDD inpatients treated with bilateral ECT. Sensitivity, specificity and predictive values were computed for v...

Background Despite the high prevalence of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) among patients with psychiatric conditions, detection rates are low. Limited knowledge and skills on DVA in mental healthcare (MHC) professionals might contribute to poor identification. Aims To assess the level of, and factors associated with, DVA knowledge and skills amo...

Objective Antidepressant medication is commonly used for the prevention of depression recurrence in the perinatal period, yet it is unknown what vulnerability markers may play a role in recurrence. The objective of the current study was to provide a descriptive overview of the associated characteristics of women who experienced a perinatal recurren...

We determined the proportions of clients treated in Flexible Assertive Community Treatment teams who were unemployed and gained employment and who were employed and lost employment. Secondly, we explored the demographical and clinical factors associated with employment. Data were collected during routine outcome monitoring. We calculated difference...

Objective: Using outcome data collected routinely over a continuous two-year treatment period, we wished to distinguish homogeneous subgroups of patients with a severe mental illness whose psychosocial problems followed a similar pattern over time. By identifying the effectiveness of health services for different patient groups, this approach allo...

Objective: To investigate whether older age predicts a higher efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in severely depressed patients. Also, to analyze whether psychomotor disturbance and/or psychotic features might explain the potential higher efficacy of ECT in older age. Method: A total of 96 patients with major depressive disorder treated...

Lithium and antipsychotics are often prescribed to treat bipolar disorder or psychotic disorders in women of childbearing age. Little is known about the consequences of these medications during pregnancy for the developing child. The objective of this article is to systematically review findings from preclinical and clinical studies that have exami...

This notice describes a correction to the above mentioned paper.

Objective: Several countries have developed Clinical Practice Guidelines regarding treatment of perinatal depressive symptoms and perinatal use of antidepressant. We aimed to compare guidelines to guide clinicians in best clinical practice. Methods: An extensive search in guideline databases, MEDLINE and PsycINFO was performed. When no guideline...

Background Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is considered to be the most effective treatment in severe major depression. The identification of reliable predictors of ECT response could contribute to a more targeted patient selection and consequently increased ECT response rates. Aims To investigate the predictive value of age, depression severity,...

Background: Since postpartum psychosis has been linked to activation of the immune system, it has been hypothesized that infectious agents may be involved in the pathogenesis of this disorder. We therefore investigated whether exposure to pathogens that can infect the central nervous system is increased in patients with postpartum psychosis. Meth...

Background: During the postpartum period, women are at risk for the new onset of both auto-immune thyroid disorders and depression. The presence of thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO-ab) during early gestation is predictive for postpartum auto-immune thyroid dysfunction. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between TPO-ab status...

Background Compulsory admissions have a strong effect on psychiatric patients and represent a deprivation of personal liberty. Although the rate of such admissions is tending to rise in several Western countries, there is little qualitative research on the mental health-care process preceding compulsory admission. The objective of the study was to...

Background: Depressive symptoms in pregnant women, which are common and debilitating, are often co-morbid with other mental disorders (e.g. anxiety and personality disorders), and related to low socioeconomic status (SES). This situation may hamper treatment outcome, which has often been neglected in previous studies on the treatment of depression...

Background Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) is associated with a range of psychosocial and mental health problems. Having a psychiatric illness increases likelihood of being a victim of DVA. Despite the evidence of a high risk for DVA and the serious effects of violent victimization in psychiatric patients, detection rates are low and responses ar...

Background: Elderly patients with somatic symptom disorder (SSD) put a great burden on the healthcare delivery system. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is effective in adults with SSD. However, no studies have been conducted yet into CBT for SSD in later life. Objectives: We explored the feasibility of CBT for SSD in the elderly. Method: Prospe...

Objectives: Postpartum psychosis (PP) is known for its clear onset but its phenotype has never been clearly described in a cohort. The aim of this study was to describe PP symptomatology, and to identify subgroups of patients based on symptom profiles. Methods: We prospectively assessed a wide range of symptoms in cases of PP in a cohort of wome...

Background: Incisional herniation is a common complication after abdominal surgery associated with considerable morbidity. The aim of this study was to determine whether incisional hernia is an early complication, in order to understand better the aetiology of incisional hernia formation. Methods: This study involved the secondary analysis of a...

Objective: To compare the efficacy of two antidepressant treatment strategies in severely depressed in-patients, that is, imipramine vs. venlafaxine, both with subsequent lithium addition in non-responders. Method: In-patients (n = 88) with major depressive disorder were randomized to 7-week treatment with imipramine or venlafaxine (phase I). Al...

Introduction Five to 8% of women of reproductive age suffer from moderate to severe symptoms of premenstrual syndrome associated with substantial distress or functional impairment. Objective To determine the efficacy, tolerability and acceptability of Vitex agnus castus (VAC, chaste-berry) preparations for treatment of premenstrual syndrome (PMS)....

Background: For women suffering from an antepartum mental disorder (AMD), there is lack of evidence-based treatment algorithms due to the complicated risk-benefit analysis for both mother and unborn child. We aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to treat AMD and performed a meta-analysi...

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