Search

The objective of this study was to determine whether implementation of a psychiatric liaison team is effective for early intervention in patients who have risk factors and improvement of their outcomes. To accomplish this, the medical records of 1,263 inpatients undergoing psychiatric consultation before and after implementation of the liaison team were retrospectively compared. Comparison results showed increases in consultation requests, mainly due to increased referrals at the cardiovascular center (19.8% vs 33.3%), patients with delirium (44.5% vs 51.8%), and frequency of nurses' referrals (0% vs 26.7%); but significant decreases in waiting time before consultation request (11 vs 9 days), duration of hospital stay (36 vs 30 days), and incidents (number of falls and inadvertent tube removal) in patients with delirium before treatment (35.8% vs 26%) were also observed. A significant increase in the use of physical restraint (36.6% to 44.8%) was noted. The results of this study show that implementation of the psychiatric liaison team enabled early intervention and a reduction in delirium-associated incidents. [ Psychiatr Ann . 2020;50(8):355–363.]

Significance There are no biomarkers for schizophrenia (SCZ), a disorder of dysfunctional neural networks. We demonstrate that a master regulator of cytoskeleton (“CRMP2”) and, hence, neural circuitry, may form the basis for such a biomarker because its activity is uniquely imbalanced in SCZ patients. We show that SCZ patients are characterized by an excess of active CRMP2 not only in their brains (where it is correlated with dendritic abnormalities) but also in their peripheral blood lymphocytes. The abundance of active CRMP2 and insufficiency of opposing inactive p-CRMP2 likely disrupts neuronal function. Because peripheral blood CRMP2 appears to reflect intracerebral processes, it could form the basis of a rapid, minimally invasive, sensitive, and specific clinical diagnostic aid for SCZ in young patients., There are no validated biomarkers for schizophrenia (SCZ), a disorder linked to neural network dysfunction. We demonstrate that collapsin response mediator protein-2 (CRMP2), a master regulator of cytoskeleton and, hence, neural circuitry, may form the basis for a biomarker because its activity is uniquely imbalanced in SCZ patients. CRMP2’s activity depends upon its phosphorylation state. While an equilibrium between inactive (phosphorylated) and active (nonphosphorylated) CRMP2 is present in unaffected individuals, we show that SCZ patients are characterized by excess active CRMP2. We examined CRMP2 levels first in postmortem brains (correlated with neuronal morphometrics) and then, because CRMP2 is expressed in lymphocytes as well, in the peripheral blood of SCZ patients versus age-matched unaffected controls. In the brains and, more starkly, in the lymphocytes of SCZ patients

The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychological effects of the COVID-19 outbreak and associated factors on hospital workers at the beginning of the outbreak with a large disease cluster on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. This cross-sectional, survey-based study collected demographic data, mental health measurements, and stress-related questionnaires from workers in 2 hospitals in Yokohama, Japan, from March 23, 2020, to April 6, 2020. The prevalence rates of general psychological distress and event-related distress were assessed using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the 22-item Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), respectively. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the 26-item stress-related questionnaires. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with mental health outcomes for workers both at high- and low-risk for infection of COVID-19. A questionnaire was distributed to 4133 hospital workers, and 2697 (65.3%) valid questionnaires were used for analyses. Overall, 536 (20.0%) were high-risk workers, 944 (35.0%) of all hospital workers showed general distress, and 189 (7.0%) demonstrated event-related distress. Multivariable logistic regression analyses revealed that ‘Feeling of being isolated and discriminated’ was associated with both the general and event-related distress for both the high- and low-risk workers. In this survey, not only high-risk workers but also low-risk workers in the hospitals admitting COVID-19 patients reported experiencing psychological distress at the beginning of the outbreak.

This paper presents a PCB-based system module including 5 CMOS-MEMS integrated sensors for robot fingertip tactile sensing. The sensor used in the module has 3-axis capacitive force sensation with 2.7 mm square footprint and integrates our original sensor platform LSI fabricated by TSMC0.13μm CMOS process. Five integrated sensors are mounted on a shared serial bus with a high-dense pitch of 9 mm and communicate with an FPGA-based relay node through RS-485 compatible differential signaling. We confirmed that these 5 integrated sensors operated simultaneously on the serial bus with a high data rate up to 16 Mbps.