Resource Tag: PARKINSON'S DISEASE

Importance  Suicide risk may be increased in patients with Parkinson disease (PD), a common neurodegenerative condition. Mood disorders, especially depression, are prevalent in patients with PD who report suicidality. Objective  To address inconsistent results from studies of suicidal ideation and behavior in patients with PD. Data Sources  The study team searched MEDLINE and Embase from inception to June […]

Objective  To use a large national representative PD cohort to compare the risk of suicide in patients with PD and control participants and identify potential risk factors. Design, Setting, and Participants  This nationwide population-based cohort study used linked data from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance data set and Taiwan Death Registry between January 2002 and December 2016. Patients […]

Depression and hallucination are the two main psychiatric symptoms in parkinsonian patients. Depressive features in Parkinson patients are very close to those of endogenous depression, except for a relative lack of anxiety, irritability, suicidal ideations, delusions and circadian rhythm. Pharmacotherapy with antidepressants is most reliable in the treatment of parkinsonian depressives, although levodopa or other […]

In this letter to the editor, the authors comment on a multicentre study by Voon et al (2008) on the risk of death by suicide in patients with Parkinson’s disease who had received subthalamic stimulation. They also briefly review results from a preclinical study they have done. The reply of Voon et al follows.

This study assessed the frequency of suicide ideation & suicide attempts in 90 Brazilian patients with Parkinson’s disease. None of the patients had ever attempted suicide. According to the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, suicide ideation was present in 13 patients. All instruments assessed the risk of suicide in a similar way. Suicide ideation was associated […]

The authors conducted a retrospective survey of 200 patients with Parkinson’s Disease who underwent subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation. Two patients died by suicide & four attempted suicide, despite clear motor improvements. Suicidal patients did no differ from non-suicidal patients with respect to age, disease duration or preoperative depressive & cognitive status. Suicidal behaviour was […]

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A series of 24 consecutive Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients were prospectively studied prior to & within 6 months postoperatively for mood, motor, & cognitive status to investigate the effects on mood of subthalamic deep brain stimulation in PD. In 6 patients, mood state worsened significantly, & 3 were transiently suicidal despite clear motor improvement. Implications […]

The risk of suicide for patients with Parkinson’s disease was compared to that in the general population. The study involved 458 patients. The follow-up period to either death or the end of December 1990 was 0 to 17 years. There were 254 deaths in the follow-up period. Two women committed suicide. The number of expected […]

This chapter reviews the suicide of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun on April 30, 1945. The author reviews Hitler’s personality and other contributing factors affecting his final decision: i.e. his Parkinson disease as a contributing factor to his fits of depression. Also, the author takes an in depth look at the debate over the method […]

This article reviews American laws on several issues, including: Kevorkian and Michigan law; care for the terminally ill; malpractice; fetal tissue, Parkinson’s disease, and abortion; and AIDS and the law.

Depression is usually diagnosed through symptoms such as sleep & appetite disturbance but for medically ill patients these symptoms are often too non-specific to diagnose depression. In this study, 2 groups of patients with Parkinson’s werecompared: those who reported depression & those who did not. Depressed patients showed a higher frequency of automatic & affective […]

Suicides in Uppsala, Sweden between 1977 & 1984 were analyzed. Of 416 persons who committed suicide, 70 had a somatic disease of probable importance for the suicidal act. Although no somatic diagnosis was especially associated with a very high risk of suicide, some diagnoses (e.g. malignant neoplasm, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis) were associated with a […]

The author’s experience from laboratory analyses of human brains leads him to conclude that, if at all present, alterations of brain monoamine metabolism in mental disorders might be of a very discrete nature, affecting only certain functional systems rather that the whole brain or any of its gross anatomical subdivisions. In this study he discusses […]

A case of suicide of a patient with Parkinson’s disease who had been treated with L-Dopa is reported. It is suggested that patients receiving L-Dopa should have careful base line evaluation of mental status and extreme caution should be used where there is preexisting psychiatric illness. Periodic reassessment of the mental state is in order […]