Character disorders

Rifkin A, Quitkin F, Carrillo C, et al. Lithium carbonate in emotionally unstable character disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1972 27 519-523. 

Recent extensive reviews describe current indications for lithium therapy primarily in bipolar disorders and experimentally in unipolar depression as well as schizo-affective schizophrenia, alcoholism, premenstrual cramps and character disorders. These reports also call attention to the narrow therapeutic index associated with its use and the need for careful moniterlng of serum levels. Serum levels of 0.6 to 1.5 mEq per liter are usually sufficient for management of symptoms. A dose of 300mg of lithium carbonate t.i.d. or q.l.d. is recommended to maintain these... 

Other uses that have been reported are Rehabilitation of criminals, treatment of sexual disorders, and treatment of mentally retarded or schizophrenic children. LSD has also proven itself successful treating psychotic adults, character disorders, sociopathic personality disorders and treatment of alcoholism. 

In addition to schizophrenia there ar a variety of other episodic or periodic psychopathological states for which lithium responsiveness has been claimed. These have been reviewed by Kline and Simpson and Gerbino et al. and include some cases of epilepsy, unstable character disorder, periodic catatonia, cycloid psychosis, and episodic alcoholism associated wdth de-pression. ... 

Rifkin A. QuitkiO F. CarillO C. Blumberg A. and Klein D. F. (1972) Lithium carbonate in emotionally unstable character disorder Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 27, 519-523. 

It is surprising how often depression connected with the use of reserpine still goes unrecognb.ed, how little attention is paid to the early mood changes, the increased frequency of nightmares and the anxiety caused by the inability to concentrate (12, 57 ). This side effect of reserpine has even been used in the psychiatric treatment of character disorders, the induced unrest and depression rendering the patient more susceptible to psychotherapy (58 =). 

Typical magnetoconductance data for the individual MWCNT are shown in Fig. 4. At low temperature, reproducible aperiodic fluctuations appear in the magnetoconduclance. The positions of the peaks and the valleys with respect to magnetic field are temperature independent. In Fig. 5, we present the temperature dependence of the peak-to-peak amplitude of the conductance fluctuations for three selected peaks (see Fig. 4) as well as the rms amplitude of the fluctuations, rms[AG]. It may be seen that the fiuctuations have constant amplitudes at low temperature, which decrease slowly with increasing temperature following a weak power law at higher temperature. The turnover in the temperature dependence of the conductance fluctuations occurs at a critical temperature Tc = 0.3 K which, in contrast to the values discussed above, is independent of the magnetic field. This behaviour was found to be consistent with a quantum transport effect of universal character, the universal conductance fluctuations (UCF) [25,26]. UCFs were previously observed in mesoscopic weakly disordered... 

The example illustrates how Monte Carlo studies of lattice models can deal with questions which reach far beyond the sheer calculation of phase diagrams. The reason why our particular problem could be studied with such success Hes of course in the fact that it touches a rather fundamental aspect of the physics of amphiphilic systems—the interplay between structure and wetting behavior. In fact, the results should be universal and apply to all systems where structured, disordered phases coexist with non-struc-tured phases. It is this universal character of many issues in surfactant physics which makes these systems so attractive for theoretical physicists. 

Let us fix attention on a particular H20 molecule A in the interior of water (if we wish to identify this molecule we can suppose that it contains a nucleus of the oxygen isotope 01S) and let us consider the water molecules which happen to be nearest neighbors of this molecule at the moment. These molecules have been in contact with A for different lengths of time. Since all the molecules in the liquid wander about, there was a time when none of these molecules was in contact with A. Further, if we could now begin to watch these molecules, we should find that, after the lapse of different periods of time, they become separated from A and each is replaced by another molecule. Similar remarks can be made about the molecules which come into contact with any chosen molecule. We can now raise the question—-What is the rate of turnover of this process The rate depends on the degree of local order and disorder, which in turn depends on the strength and character of the forces between adjacent molecules. 

We thus see that the RFOT theory provides a rather complete picture of vitrification and the microscopies of the molecular motions in glasses. The possibility of having a complete chart of allowed degrees of freedom is veiy important, because it puts strict limitations on the range of a priori scenarios of structural excitations that can take place in amorphous lattices. This will be of great help in the assessment of the family of strong interaction hypotheses mentioned in the introduction. To summarize, the present theory should apply to all amorphous materials produced by routine quenching, with quantitative deviations expected when the sample is partially crystalline. The presence and amount of crystallinity can be checked independently by X-ray. It is also likely that other classes of disordered materials, such as disordered crystals, will exhibit many similar traits, but of less universal character. 

Patient may feel that depression is a character weakness or personality flaw instead of a biologic disorder. 

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