Schizophrenia is a mental disorder causing a range of psychological symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disordered thinking, and abnormal motor behaviour, and which is considered by many as a neurodevelopmental disorder (Murray & Lewis, 1987; Weinberger, 2003). It affects 0.5–1% of the worldwide population, with a common onset in late adolescence to early adulthood (Perälä …
Depression is a mental disorder characterised by clinical symptoms including low mood, rumination, functional impairment, retardation, and somatic syndromes such as sleep disturbances and loss of appetite (Lorr et al., 1967). Antidepressants were serendipitously discovered in the 1950s, when Iproniazid, a drug originally prescribed as a treatment for tuberculosis, was shown to induce increased vitality …
In humans, stress can be defined as an actual or anticipated disruption of homeostasis in an individual (Ulrich-Lai & Herman, 2009). The brain plays a central role in the experience of stressful events and the regulation of stress: it adapts to stress both functionally and structurally, and dictates how individuals cope with stress (McEwen & …
Deinstitutionalisation – which can be defined as the diversion of people with a mental disorder to community mental health services, reducing the population of psychiatric hospitals, the number of psychiatric bed-days, and broadening the responsibilities of other service entities such as general hospitals and residential care (Bachrach, 1989) – started in Italy in the 1960s …
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered one of the most rigorous and scientific methodologies to determine whether a cause-effect relationship exists between treatment and outcome, allowing researchers to exclude the possibility that the association was caused by an alternative factor (Sibbald & Roland, 1998). The random allocation to intervention groups, or randomisation, renders the groups …
Theory of mind (Premack & Woodruff, 1978) is the ability to understand the contents of another person’s mind, including their knowledge, emotions, beliefs, and intentions (Kloo et al, 2010). It is essential for social cognition (Astington & Edward, 2010), referential communication (Sidera et al, 2018), and better theory of mind is associated with better social interaction skills …