Roberto Tatarelli

Sapienza University of Rome | la sapienza · Department of Neuroscience, Mental Health and Sense Organs NESMOS

Objective: Suicide rate in police officers is higher than in the general population worldwide. This paper assesses and analyzes the trends in suicide rates of Italian police officers from 1995 to 2017, comparing these with the trends of Italian general population. Methods: We reviewed all cases of active Italian police officers who died by suici...

Background: Suicide in international police is 2-3-fold that of the general population. Risk factors include suicidal ideation, diagnosis of mood or post-traumatic stress disorders, family/psychological problems, suffered abuse, alcohol use, service suspension, and stigma. A false stigma-related myth is to believe that suicide does not cause conce...

Background and aim: Psychopathy is associated with cognitive and affective deficits causing disruptive, harmful and selfish behaviour. These have considerable societal costs due to recurrent crime and property damage. A better understanding of the neurobiological bases of psychopathy could improve therapeutic interventions, reducing the related so...

The purpose of this literature database search-based review was to critically consider and evaluate the findings of literature focusing on efficacy and safety of 5-HT3 antagonists in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), so as to test whether preclinical data match clinical therapeutic trials. The PubMed database has been searched f...

Several questions arise from the recent use of behavioral genetic research data in the courtroom. Ethical issues concerning the influence of biological factors on human free will, must be considered when specific gene patterns are advocated to constrain court's judgment, especially regarding violent crimes. Aggression genetics studies are both diff...

Several questions arise from the recent use of behavioral genetic research data in the courtroom. Ethical issues concerning the influence of biological factors on human free will, must be considered when specific gene patterns are advocated to constrain court's judgment, especially regarding violent crimes. Aggression genetics studies are both diff...

Background and aims: Campaigns providing information about illness may help to overcome social stigma against people with mental health problems. This study evaluates the efficacy of an educational project conducted among teenagers attending high school, aimed at increasing mental health knowledge and challenging negative stereotypes linked to ment...

Background: Schizophrenia is preceded by basic symptoms which may persist after long time and include subjective cognitive impairment. Furthermore, it is characterised by cognitive deficits that may deteriorate with the progression of illness. To examine the relationship between neurocognition and basic symptoms along the course of schizophrenia,...

Primary objective: Early treatment of epilepsy is warranted to avoid possible severe consequences. This study aimed to assess the value of treatment in a patient who developed epilepsy after major brain surgery. Design: Case description. A 51 years-old man had a history of putative petit mal seizures since adolescence and left frontotemporal lob...

Panic disorder, a relatively common anxiety disorder, is often associated to agoraphobia and may be disabling. Its neurobiological underpinnings are unknown, despite the proliferation of models and hypotheses concerning it; investigating its correlates could provide the means for better understanding its pathophysiology. Recent structural neuroimag...

Background: Affective disorders are highly disabling illnesses constituting a significant burden for the patients, their family and the society. Therefore, it would be very useful to find tools which carefully subtype these conditions and have a strong and reliable predictive power concerning the course of illness and health and social functioning...

Insight may vary across psychosis risk syndrome (PRS), first-episode schizophrenia (FES), or multiepisode schizophrenia (MES). We aimed to compare insight domains (awareness, relabeling, and compliance) in PRS, FES, and MES groups and to correlate scores with psychopathological measures. Insight was assessed in 48 (14 PRS, 16 FES, and 18 MES) patie...

Aim: To evaluate the efficacy of olanzapine in patients in their manic/mixed phase with or without comorbidity with substance abuse/dependence disorder. Methods: In this observational, controlled, prospective study, 60 patients with a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of bipolar disorder, manic/mixed episode (30 patients with and 30 patient without comorbidit...

Recent functional neuroimaging studies show that the amygdala has a central role in threat evaluation, in response to conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, in fear learning and fear extinction. The amygdala is involved in the pathophysiology of phobias and anxiety. In this review we critically examine the main findings of functional neuroimaging s...

Background: Craving for alcohol is associated with abnormal activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS) has shown promise in the treatment of depression. There are few treatment options for treatment-resistant dysthymic disorder comorbid with alcohol use disorder. Objective: To investigate the...

A 41-year-old man with comorbid binge-eating disorder, severe obesity, and bipolar disorder since the age of 20 years, resistant to drug and psychotherapy combinations, worsened progressively. Relentless weight gain forced him to immobility and dependence on others. He was hospitalized for a mixed-mood episode with anxiety, mystical delusions, and...

A 24-year-old man experiencing comorbid body dysmorphic disorder since age 16 years, complicated in recent months by a major depressive episode with psychotic features, showed resistance to various drug and psychotherapy combinations. We suggested electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to overcome treatment resistance. After 1 ECT cycle, mood and anxiety...

Objective To explore gray (GM) and white matter (WM) abnormalities and the relationships with neuropsychopathology in first-episode schizophrenia (FES). Method Nineteen patients with first episode of non-affective psychosis and 18 controls underwent a magnetic resonance voxel-based morphometry. Additionally, WM fractional anisotropy (FA) was calcul...

Individuals with schizophrenia experience problems in the perception of emotion throughout the course of the disorder. Few studies have addressed the progression of the deficit over time. The present investigation explores face emotion recognition (FER) performance throughout the course of schizophrenia. The aim of the study was to test the hypothe...

A young woman with bipolar I disorder and comorbid catatonia on enteral nutrition from several months, developed a form of near-lethal catatonia with weight loss, pressure sores, muscle atrophy, electrolyte imbalance, and depression of vital signs. A compulsory treatment was necessary, and informed consent was obtained from her mother for electroco...

Introduction. The elderly population is more frequently subjected,to depressive mood compared to the general population and show peculiarities affecting responsiveness; furthermore, aged people need also special care. Duloxetine is a relatively new antidepressant that proved to be effective in adult depression, but has received little attention in...

Post-traumatic emotional distress follows exposure to trauma and may be affected by atypical cerebral lateralisation. We aimed to explore the relationship between handedness and emotional dysfunction in people exposed to a nat-ural disaster. About 22 months after an earthquake, 326 exposed adults completed the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, the Im...

The aim of the present study was to investigate suicidal risk in psychiatric referrals admitted to a University Hospital Emergency Department (ED) who had a substance use disorder. The participants were 135 psychiatric referrals (84 men and 51 women) admitted to the ED of the Sant' Andrea Hospital of Rome (Italy) between January 2006 and February 2...

Pediatric, adolescent and adult obesity is one of the most important public health challenge. Obesity and overweight are often associated with increased disability, enhanced morbidity and mortality, premature death.Obesity and overweight are also frequently comorbid with several medical and psychiatric conditions. A body mass index (BMI) over 30 si...

Specific phobias (SPs) are common, with lifetime prevalence estimates of 10%. Our current understanding of their pathophysiology owes much to neuroimaging studies, which enabled us to construct increasingly efficient models of the underlying neurocircuitry. We provide an updated, comprehensive review and analyze the relevant literature of functiona...

Aim: Disorders usually first diagnosed in infancy, childhood or adolescence (DUFD-ICA) may have preceded the onset of psychosis by several years and share some co-morbidity with psychotic disorders, but only a few studies have investigated this aspect. We looked for past or current DUFD-ICA in a sample of first adult psychiatric service users asse...

Functional neuroimaging studies show that hypnosis affects attention by modulating anterior cingulate cortex activation and uncoupling conflict monitoring and cognitive control function. Considering functional changes in the activation of the occipital and temporal cortices, precuneus, and other extrastriate visual areas, which account for hypnosis...

Schizophrenia is an invalidating disorder usually with an onset during adolescence or young adulthood and tending to persist throughout life. Both cognitive and emotional dysfunctions may be found in schizophrenic patients determining severe psychosocial impairment. The present chapter aimed to provide a critical overview about early onset schizoph...

The aim of this study is to evaluate biological factors associated with recent suicidal attempts in a naturalistic sample. A total of 439 patients suffering from major depression disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD) and psychotic disorders (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and psychosis not otherwise specified), who were consecutively asses...

Insight affects adherence and treatment outcome and relates to cognitive impairment and psychopathology. We investigated the relationship of insight with cognition in patients with major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in acute psychiatric care, long-term inpatient, and outpatient settings. Eighty-one patients (women, 59.5%; age, 45....

A woman with bipolar disorder I, histrionic personality disorder, and suicidal ideation with repeated suicide attempts, who had been treated for 2 years with mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines, received a total of 8 bitemporal-biparietal electroconvulsive therapy sessions. Her suicidal ideation and self-harm behavior disappeared...

A 36-year-old man with comorbid panic disorder with agoraphobia, major depression, and histrionic personality disorder since age 21 was resistant to combined drug and psychotherapy treatment. His conditions had progressively worsened with time, causing him to withdraw socially and to simultaneously require continuous physical restraint, which furth...

An 18-year-old man with Arnold-Chiari malformation (ACM) type I developed sudden panic attacks. He also manifested sleep disorder, cannabis abuse, and psychosis-risk syndrome (PRS). Although with average-superior intelligence, he had executive dysfunction. This prompted us to explore the relation between ACM, cannabis abuse, PRS and panic disorder....

RIASSUNTO L'ospedalizzazione in regime di trattamento sanitario obbligatorio (TSO) per un disturbo mentale costituisce un evento intriso di problematicità, ed è associata inequivocabilmente ad una condizione di incapacità a prestare consenso. Nonostante dal punto di vista legale un paziente sia considerato, secondo una visione dicotomica, capace op...

The aims of the study were to evaluate how religion's impact on people can be used to prevent suicide. Personal and family's orientation toward religion and spirituality may constitute either a protective factor against suicide, risky behaviors, and depression, or a negative factor causing strain, deficits in coping skills and exposing the individu...

Introduction White matter abnormalities play a prominent role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies showed a widespread decrease in fractional anisotropy (FA) in psychotic disorders. Aims To examine white and grey matter abnormalities in first episode psychosis (FEP). Methods We obtained T1-weighted and DTI...

Objective The authors examined the association between tobacco smoking and suicidal ideation and planning in schoolchildren from 10 countries in Africa, the Americas, and the Western Pacific region. Method Data were collected through the Global school-based Student Health Survey (GSHS), a collaborative surveillance project between the World Health...

Suicidal behavior is one of the most alarming signs not only in psychiatry, and current major depressive episode is the most frequent medical condition among suicide victims and attempters. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the individual pattern of affective temperaments, non-typical symptoms of depression as measure...

Nowadays depression and suicide are two of the most important worldwide public health problems. Although their specific molecular mechanisms are still largely unknown, glycosides can play a fundamental role in their pathogenesis. These molecules act presumably through the up-regulation of plasticity-related proteins: probably they can have a presyn...

Dickkopf-1 (DKK1) is an inhibitor of the canonical Wnt pathway, which is known to be impaired in both psychotic and neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we examined serum DKK1 levels as an indicator of ongoing neurodegeneration in psychotic patients, with or without a recent or current history of drug abuse. We measured serum DKK1 levels by ELISA in...

To examine the relationship between facial affect recognition (FAR) and subjective perceptual disturbances (SPDs), we assessed SPDs in 82 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia (44 with first-episode psychosis [FEP] and 38 with multiple episodes [ME]) using two subscales of the Frankfurt Complaint Questionnaire (FCQ), WAS (simple perception) and WAK (c...

Little is known about the ability of persons with severe mental disorders to give consent to sexual activity. A possible reason for this shortcoming is the absence of specific criteria and tools to measure sexual consent in psychiatric clinical settings. We developed a clinician oriented semi-structured interview, the Sexual Consent Assessment Scal...

Objective: The reliability of child witness testimony in sexual abuse cases is often controversial, and few tools are available. Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) is a widely used instrument for evaluating psychological credibility in cases of suspected child sexual abuse. Only few studies have evaluated CBCA scores in children suspected of b...

The aim of the authors in this study was to assess the prevalence of postpartum depression and evaluate the association of affective temperaments with emotional disorders in a sample of 92 pregnant women consecutively admitted for delivery between March and December 2009. In the first few days postpartum, women completed the Suicidal History Self-r...

Homicide-suicide is an event in which the murderer commits suicide after the homicide. There are at least 14 epidemiological studies on the topic, and all have found that homicide-suicide is more common among family members. The murderers are most often males and the victims females. There is no recent research on this phenomenon in Italy. The purp...

Suicide is a major cause of premature death in Italy and occurs at different rates in the various regions. The aim of the present study was to provide a comprehensive overview of suicide in the Italian population aged 15 years and older for the years 1980-2006. Mortality data were extracted from the Italian Mortality Database. Mortality rates for s...

The aims of the study were to study: (i) affective temperaments in open-angle glaucoma (OAG) patients with some degree of functional visual impairment; (ii) psychological well-being and perceived disability, and their associations with affective temperaments; and (iii) associations between visual impairment, affective temperaments and psychological...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a severe, highly prevalent and chronically disabling psychiatric disorder that usually emerges during childhood or adolescence. This paper aims to review the literature on functional neuroimaging in OCD, analysing the reported dysfunctional connectivity in the corticostriatothalamocortical circuitry. This stud...

A patient presenting with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, bipolar disorder was found to be affected by high iron hemochromatosis. This prompted us to explore the relation between bipolar disorder and iron overload. We report the case and review the peer-reviewed literature focusing on mood symptoms in patients...

Bipolar disorders (BD) are of particular public health significance as they are prevalent, severe and disabling, and often associated with elevated risks of premature mortality. The aim of this concise overview is to investigate the role of asenapine in the treatment of manic and mixed states associated with BD type 1 disorder. MedLine, Excerpta Me...

Molecular Psychiatry publishes work aimed at elucidating biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and their treatment

The Met allele of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) valine-to-methionine (Val158Met) polymorphism is known to affect dopamine-dependent affective regulation within amygdala-prefrontal cortical (PFC) networks. It is also thought to increase the risk of a number of disorders characterized by affective morbidity including bipolar disorder (BD),...

The aim of this study was to identify predictors of completed suicide in a wide sample of psychiatric inpatients receiving retrospective and prospective DSM-IV diagnoses. We followed up 4441 severe psychiatric patients who were hospitalized for some time during a 35-year period in a private hospital setting. We collected sociodemographic, clinical...

Background and Objectives: Neuroimaging studies have found higher rates of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) of all ages, although whether BD is associated with increased rates of WMHs independently from age and cerebrovascular risk factors is still matter of debate. The outcome of BD associated with severe...

Fear perception and subsequent appropriate behavioural response are crucial for the adaptation of species. During the past few decades functional neuro-imaging studies in humans exploring the neural basis of fear have contributed significantly to the understanding of its mechanisms. Imaging studies help to clarify the role of the amygdala-based neu...

Patients with white matter hyperintensities (WMH) may be at higher risk for affective disorders and suicide. Affective temperaments may play a significant role in mood disorders. This study aimed to evaluate the eventual association between WMH, affective temperaments and suicidal behaviour in major affective disorder. A total of 318 patients with...

Toscana virus (TOSV) infection may often cause symptomatic meningitides and encephalitides. These usually subside in few days and their sequelae do not last for more than few weeks. We here report the case of a 49-year-old man who developed encephalitis after being bitten by phlebotomi in a region near southern Tuscany, where TOSV is endemic, and w...

Interest in the history of psychiatry continues to grow, with an increasing emphasis on topics of current interest such as the history of nosology and the interplay between psychiatry and society. The present study was designed to investigate diagnoses and sociodemographic characteristics of patients during the course of the last century in a sampl...

Stalking behaviour may find its roots in an individual's psychological development and culture-related factors that facilitate it. Psychiatric disorders may underlie some stalking cases, but no reports exist of the relationship of actual psychiatric status with the expression of stalking behaviour. A 22-year-old adoptive woman perpetrated stalking...

The 19-item 'Scale Of Prodromal Symptoms' (SOPS) and its semi-structured interview, the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms (SIPS), have been developed to assess prodromes of psychosis. We assessed psychometric properties of the Italian version of the instrument. We collected socio-demographic and clinical data of 128 people seeking first-t...

Accessible summary• Genetic explanation of schizophrenia was frequently associated with stigmatizing attitudes.• Medical students and doctors expressed higher levels of perceived stigmatization than other groups of subsects.• Participants perception of other people stigmatizing attitudes was associated with genetic explanation of schizophrenia.Abst...

Patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) perform poorly on tasks of selective attention and inhibitory control. Although similar behavioural deficits have been noted in their relatives, it is yet unclear whether they reflect dysfunction in the same neural circuits. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and the Stroop Colour Word Task to compare...

Cognitive Task Performance (DOC)

Abnormalities in cognition have been reported in patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and their first degree relatives, suggesting that susceptibility genes for BD may impact on cognitive processes. Recent genome-wide genetic studies have reported a strong association with BD in a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (rs10994336) within ANK3, which...

The aim of this study was to develop a reliable self-report instrument (the Suicide History Self-Rating Screening Scale: SHSS) to identify individuals with a higher propensity for suicide in the near term. One hundred and twenty nine consecutive inpatients with mental illness completed the SHSS (a 16-item measure assessing death thoughts, suicidal...

Suicidal behavior in peacekeepers is not well documented because only a few articles have investigated this field. These articles suggest that mental health problems represent the most important risk factor for suicide. The risk factors for suicide in peacekeepers can be divided into: (1) before deployment, such as parental psychosocial problems an...

Much evidence has shown that PTSD is significantly associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Suicide is an important cause of death in veterans, and the risk for intentional death continues to be high many years after service. Specific PTSD symptoms and specific psychological conditions associated with chronic stress reactions may con...

Most cases of suicide (81%-95%) in the general population involve psychiatric illnesses, nearly half of which (48.5%) are mood disorders. Internationally, the overall average suicide rate has been rising gradually over the past half-century, with increases reported in about half of nations, mainly among men, and moderate decreases found in another...

The present study was designed to explore psychopathological correlates of self-deception in clinical and nonclinical individuals to ascertain whether self-deception was associated with higher hopelessness, a proxy of suicide risk. The patients were 58 consecutive psychiatric patients (30 men, 28 women) admitted to the Sant'Andrea Hospital's psychi...

Treatment of shared delusional disorder (folie à deux) often involves separation and use of antipsychotic medication, with uncertain outcomes and potential risks. We report on two highly interdependent and chronically psychotic sisters with shared systematic delusion, followed by psychiatrists over several years. The dominant patient was diagnosed...