A new study shows that deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a safe and effective intervention for treatment-resistant depression in patients with either unipolar major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar ll disorder (BP). The study was published Online First by Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, reports that abnormal sequences of DNA known as rare copy number variants, or CNVs, appear to play a significant role in the risk for early onset bipolar disorder.

The findings were published in the Dec. 22 issue of the journal Neuron.

CNVs are genomic alterations in which there are too few or too many copies of sections of DNA. Researchers have known that spontaneously occurring (de novo) CNVs - genetic mutations not inherited from parents - significantly increase the risk for some neuropsychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia or the autism spectrum disorders. But their role was unclear in bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression.

Although many mental illnesses are uniquely human, animals sometimes exhibit abnormal behaviors similar to those seen in humans with psychological disorders. Such behaviors are called endophenotypes. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that mice lacking a gene that encodes a particular protein found in the synapses of the brain display a number of endophenotypes associated with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders.

The new findings appear in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, with Mary Kennedy, the Allen and Lenabelle Davis Professor of Biology at Caltech, as the senior author.

Significant progress has been made in understanding the genetic risk factors underlying psychiatric disease. Recent studies have identified common genetic mutations conferring modest risk and rare variants comprising significant risk. One example of a rare cause of psychiatric disorders is the Disrupted in Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) gene, first identified in a large Scottish pedigree displaying schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how severe the future illness course of a patient with psychosis will be, according to research funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The findings could allow doctors to make more accurate decisions about how best to treat patients.

Psychosis is a condition that affects people's minds, altering the way they think, feel and behave. It can be accompanied by hallucinations and delusions. The most common forms are part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but symptoms of psychosis can also occur in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and alcohol or drug abuse.

Use of criteria such as family history of mania and early onset of illness resulted in the diagnosis of 31 percent more cases of bipolar disorder in individuals experiencing a major depressive episode, according to results of a large international study reported this year.

Charles L. Bowden, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry with UT Medicine San Antonio, was the sole North American author of the study described in Archives of General Psychiatry. UT Medicine San Antonio is the faculty practice of the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio.

Researchers at the University of Leeds investigating the genetic causes of bipolar disorder have identified two new drugs = one of which has already been found safe in clinical trials - that may be effective in treating the disorder.

Bipolar disorder is characterised by mood swings between mania and depression. Like autism, it is thought to be a spectrum of disorders and, although its causes are not well understood, it seems to run in families and is thought to be caused by both genetic and environmental factors.

In the first study to systematically investigate genome-wide epigenetic differences in a large number of psychosis discordant twin-pairs, research at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King's College London provides further evidence that epigenetic processes play an important role in neuropsychiatric disease. Published in Human Molecular Genetics, the findings may offer potential new avenues for treatment.

Previous quantitative genetic analyses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder reveal strong inherited components to both. However, although heritability for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is estimated at 70%, disease concordance between twin-pairs is far from 100%, indicating that non-genetic factors play an important role in the onset of the diseases.

A team of over 250 researchers from more than 20 countries have discovered that common genetic variations contribute to a person's risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The study of more than 50,000 adults ages 18 and older provides new molecular evidence that 11 DNA regions in the human genome have strong association with these diseases, including six regions not previously observed. The researchers also found that many of these DNA variants contribute to both diseases.

The findings, reported by the Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Study Consortium and published online in two papers in the journal Nature Genetics, represent significant advances in the understanding the causes of these chronic, severe, and debilitating disorders.

Recognition of bipolar disorder in adolescents is now clearly established. However, whether bipolarity exists in children remains controversial despite numerous studies that have been conducted on this topic in the last fifteen years. Since the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children has been rising for the past ten years, clinicians, researchers, parents, and others who care for children are left wondering what accounts for this dramatic increase in diagnosing paediatric bipolar disorder (Dickstein, 2010): is it better recognition of an important psychiatric disorder or is it due to overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, or a diagnostic trend?