Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Outputs (68)

Early Intervention in Psychosis and Management of First Episode Psychosis in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review (2024)
Journal Article

Background and Hypothesis People with first-episode psychosis (FEP) in low- and lower-middle-income countries (LMIC) experience delays in receiving treatment, resulting in poorer outcomes and higher mortality. There is robust evidence for effective a... Read More about Early Intervention in Psychosis and Management of First Episode Psychosis in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review.

The relationship between pain and depression and anxiety in patients with inflammatory arthritis: a systematic review protocol (2023)
Journal Article

Pain is a major challenge for patients with inflammatory arthritis (IA). Depression and anxiety are common comorbidities in IA, associating with worse outcomes. How they relate to pain is uncertain, with existing systematic reviews (a) mainly conside... Read More about The relationship between pain and depression and anxiety in patients with inflammatory arthritis: a systematic review protocol.

Traditional healers working with primary care and mental health for early intervention in psychosis in young persons: protocol for the feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial (2023)
Journal Article

Objectives In low/middle-income countries (LMICs), more than half of patients with first-episode psychosis initially seek treatment from traditional and religious healers as their first care. This contributes to an excessively long duration of untrea... Read More about Traditional healers working with primary care and mental health for early intervention in psychosis in young persons: protocol for the feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial.

Traditional healers working with primary care and mental health for early intervention in psychosis in young persons: protocol for the feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial (2023)
Journal Article

Objectives: In low/middle-income countries (LMICs), more than half of patients with first-episode psychosis initially seek treatment from traditional and religious healers as their first care. This contributes to an excessively long duration of untre... Read More about Traditional healers working with primary care and mental health for early intervention in psychosis in young persons: protocol for the feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial.

Role of Primary Care Physicians in management of Schizophrenia in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC): A systematic review (2023)
Journal Article

Many people with Schizophrenia lack the resources and access to mental health services especially in low and middle income countries. Integration of mental health into primary care services can be a cost effective way of reducing the disability assoc... Read More about Role of Primary Care Physicians in management of Schizophrenia in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC): A systematic review.

Study protocol of DIVERGE, the first genetic epidemiological study of major depressive disorder in Pakistan. (2023)
Journal Article

INTRODUCTION: Globally, 80% of the burdenof major depressive disorder (MDD) pertains to low- and middle-income countries. Research into genetic and environmental risk factors has the potential to uncover disease mechanisms that may contribute to bett... Read More about Study protocol of DIVERGE, the first genetic epidemiological study of major depressive disorder in Pakistan..

Cluster A personality disorders and potential for early intervention in psychosis: Challenges and opportunities (2022)
Book Chapter

The ‘Cluster A’ personality disorders consist of paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders. The common features of personality disorders in this cluster are social awkwardness, social withdrawal, odd or eccentric behaviour and distorte... Read More about Cluster A personality disorders and potential for early intervention in psychosis: Challenges and opportunities.

Patients’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives on a community-based intervention for schizophrenia in Pakistan: A focus group study (2022)
Journal Article

OBJECTIVE: To explore the perceptions and experiences of schizophrenia from patients, their care givers, health care providers, spiritual and traditional healers to develop a community-based intervention for improving treatment adherence for people w... Read More about Patients’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives on a community-based intervention for schizophrenia in Pakistan: A focus group study.

Study protocol for the development and internal validation of SPIRIT (Schizophrenia Prediction of Resistance to Treatment): A clinical tool for predicting risk of treatment resistance to anti-psychotics in First Episode Schizophrenia (2022)
Journal Article

ABSTRACTIntroductionTreatment Resistant Schizophrenia (TRS) is associated with significant impairment of functioning and high treatment costs. Identification of patients at high risk of TRS at their initial diagnosis may significantly improve clinica... Read More about Study protocol for the development and internal validation of SPIRIT (Schizophrenia Prediction of Resistance to Treatment): A clinical tool for predicting risk of treatment resistance to anti-psychotics in First Episode Schizophrenia.

An International Adult Guideline for Making Clozapine Titration Safer by Using Six Ancestry-Based Personalized Dosing Titrations, CRP, and Clozapine Levels (2021)
Journal Article

This international guideline proposes improving clozapine package inserts worldwide by using ancestry-based dosing and titration. Adverse drug reaction (ADR) databases suggest that clozapine is the third most toxic drug in the United States (US), and... Read More about An International Adult Guideline for Making Clozapine Titration Safer by Using Six Ancestry-Based Personalized Dosing Titrations, CRP, and Clozapine Levels.

Pharmacological or non-pharmacological interventions for treatment of common mental disorders associated with Tuberculosis: A systematic review. (2021)
Journal Article

We aimed to review the literature on interventions for treating Common Mental Disorders (CMD) in people with Tuberculosis (TB). We followed PRISMA guidelines and the protocol was registered at PROSPERO. The electronic databases (PsycInfo, CINAHL, Med... Read More about Pharmacological or non-pharmacological interventions for treatment of common mental disorders associated with Tuberculosis: A systematic review..

Self-reported health and smoking status, and body mass index: a case-control comparison based on GEN SCRIP (GENetics of SChizophRenia In Pakistan) data (2021)
Journal Article

Introduction Individuals with schizophrenia are at a high risk of physical health comorbidities and premature mortality. Cardiovascular and metabolic causes are an important contributor. There are gaps in monitoring, documenting and managing these ph... Read More about Self-reported health and smoking status, and body mass index: a case-control comparison based on GEN SCRIP (GENetics of SChizophRenia In Pakistan) data.

Switching antipsychotics to support the physical health of people with severe mental illness: A qualitative study of healthcare professionals' perspectives (2021)
Journal Article

OBJECTIVES: The side effects of antipsychotic medications (APs) can increase the risk of developing physical health conditions. Some APs pose a higher risk than others. Evidence suggests switching to lower risk APs can support physical health outcome... Read More about Switching antipsychotics to support the physical health of people with severe mental illness: A qualitative study of healthcare professionals' perspectives.

Acute myocardial infarction in several mental illness: a nationwide analysis of prevalence, management strategies and outcomes (2020)
Journal Article

Background Severe mental illness (SMI) is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality. However, it is unclear whether SMI patients are just as likely to receive guideline-recommended therapy for AMI as those without men... Read More about Acute myocardial infarction in several mental illness: a nationwide analysis of prevalence, management strategies and outcomes.

Culturally adapted trauma-focused CBT-based guided self-help (CatCBT GSH) for female victims of domestic violence in Pakistan: feasibility randomized controlled trial. (2020)
Journal Article

BACKGROUND: Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), self-help and guided self-help interventions have been found to be efficacious and cost effective for victims of trauma, but there are limited data from low- and middle-income countries on culturally ada... Read More about Culturally adapted trauma-focused CBT-based guided self-help (CatCBT GSH) for female victims of domestic violence in Pakistan: feasibility randomized controlled trial..

Cost-effectiveness of WHO Problem Management Plus for adults with mood and anxiety disorders in a post-conflict area of Pakistan: randomised controlled trial. (2020)
Journal Article

BACKGROUND: With the development of evidence-based interventions for treatment of priority mental health conditions in humanitarian settings, it is important to establish the cost-effectiveness of such interventions to enable their scale-up. AIMS: To... Read More about Cost-effectiveness of WHO Problem Management Plus for adults with mood and anxiety disorders in a post-conflict area of Pakistan: randomised controlled trial..

Supervised treatment in outpatients for schizophrenia plus (STOPS+): protocol for a cluster randomised trial of a community-based intervention to improve treatment adherence and reduce the treatment gap for schizophrenia in Pakistan (2020)
Journal Article

Introduction: There is a significant treatment gap, with only a few community-based services for people with schizophrenia in Low- and Middle-Income countries. Poor treatment adherence in schizophrenia is associated with poorer health outcomes, suici... Read More about Supervised treatment in outpatients for schizophrenia plus (STOPS+): protocol for a cluster randomised trial of a community-based intervention to improve treatment adherence and reduce the treatment gap for schizophrenia in Pakistan.

Pharmacological interventions for prevention of depression in high risk conditions: Systematic review and meta-analysis. (2020)
Journal Article

BACKGROUND: Background Depressive disorders account for almost half of all Disability Adjusted Life Years caused by psychiatric disorders but efficacy of pharmacological interventions to prevent depressive disorders is not known. We aimed to assess e... Read More about Pharmacological interventions for prevention of depression in high risk conditions: Systematic review and meta-analysis..

Do Asian Patients Require Only Half of the Clozapine Dose Prescribed for Caucasians? A Critical Overview (2020)
Journal Article

Since 1997, studies have found that Asians need lower clozapine doses than Caucasians. Caucasians with average clozapine metabolism may need from 300 to 600 mg/day to reach the therapeutic range (350 ng/ml). Thus, serum clozapine concentration-to-dos... Read More about Do Asian Patients Require Only Half of the Clozapine Dose Prescribed for Caucasians? A Critical Overview.

Hospital preparedness for disaster and mass casualty management in Pakistan: A cross-sectional evaluation study (2019)
Journal Article

Background: World Health Organization has advocated preemptive readiness of health systems to manage disastrous events. Pakistan is known to be highly susceptible to disasters on the one hand and significantly lacking in coping ability on the other.... Read More about Hospital preparedness for disaster and mass casualty management in Pakistan: A cross-sectional evaluation study.

Patterns of symptoms before a diagnosis of first episode psychosis: a latent class analysis of UK primary care electronic health records. (2019)
Journal Article

Background: The nature of symptoms in the prodromal period of first episode psychosis (FEP) remains unclear. The objective was to determine patterns of symptoms recorded in primary care in the 5-years before FEP diagnosis. Methods: The study was s... Read More about Patterns of symptoms before a diagnosis of first episode psychosis: a latent class analysis of UK primary care electronic health records..

Pharmacoepidemiology Research: delivering evidence about drug safety and effectiveness in mental health (2019)
Journal Article

There is a need for research that provides an evidence base for the pharmacotherapy of people with mental disorders. The abundance of digital data in recent years has facilitated pharmacoepidemiology in the form of observational comparative effective... Read More about Pharmacoepidemiology Research: delivering evidence about drug safety and effectiveness in mental health.

Video intervention for the psychiatric waiting room: proof-of-concept randomised controlled trial of RESOLVE (Relaxation Exercise, SOLVing problem and cognitive Errors). (2019)
Journal Article

BACKGROUND: The waiting room in psychiatric services can provide an ideal setting for offering evidence-based psychological interventions that can be delivered through electronic media. Currently, there is no intervention available that have been d... Read More about Video intervention for the psychiatric waiting room: proof-of-concept randomised controlled trial of RESOLVE (Relaxation Exercise, SOLVing problem and cognitive Errors)..

Acute Myocardial Infarction in Severe Mental Illness: prevalence, clinical outcomes and process of care in United States hospitalizations. (2019)
Journal Article

Patients with severe mental illness (SMI) are a high-risk group for cardiovascular disease. The present study examined the prevalence and outcomes of SMI patients in a national AMI cohort. SMI has doubled in prevalence amongst AMI patients, mainly du... Read More about Acute Myocardial Infarction in Severe Mental Illness: prevalence, clinical outcomes and process of care in United States hospitalizations..

Sharing information about diagnosis and outcome of firstepisode psychosis in patients presenting to early intervention services (2019)
Journal Article

Aim First-episode psychosis (FEP) can be a serious and debilitating disease, but there is limited literature on how to inform patients and carers about its diagnosis and outcome. We aimed to examine the attitudes, practices and views of clinicians w... Read More about Sharing information about diagnosis and outcome of firstepisode psychosis in patients presenting to early intervention services.

Systematic review into factors associated with the recruitment crisis in psychiatry in the UK: students', trainees' and consultants' views. (2018)
Journal Article

Aims and method To review the literature to examine the factors that may be affecting recruitment into psychiatry in the UK. We systematically searched four databases to identify studies from 1974 to 2016 and identified 27 papers that met the specifi... Read More about Systematic review into factors associated with the recruitment crisis in psychiatry in the UK: students', trainees' and consultants' views..

mHealth based interventions for the assessment and treatment of psychotic disorders: a systematic review (2017)
Journal Article

The relative burden of mental health disorders is increasing globally, in terms of prevalence and disability. There is limited data available to guide treatment choices for clinicians in low resourced settings, with mHealth technologies being a poten... Read More about mHealth based interventions for the assessment and treatment of psychotic disorders: a systematic review.

Explanatory model of illness of the patients with schizophrenia and the role of educational intervention (2017)
Journal Article

This randomized controlled trial was conducted at Department of Psychiatry, Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar from February to August 2015 to explore beliefs and concepts of patients with schizophrenia about their illness and to find out the effectiven... Read More about Explanatory model of illness of the patients with schizophrenia and the role of educational intervention.

Adherence to medication in the community: audit cycle of interventions to improve the assessment of adherence (2017)
Journal Article

Aims and method To investigate whether medication adherence is monitored during follow-up in out-patient reviews. A retrospective audit was carried out with a sample of 50 follow-up patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disord... Read More about Adherence to medication in the community: audit cycle of interventions to improve the assessment of adherence.

Prescribing pattern of clozapine and other antipsychotics for patients with first-episode psychosis: a cross-sectional survey of early intervention teams (2016)
Journal Article

Objective: To describe the pattern of antipsychotic drug prescribing in patients with first episode psychosis, with more emphasis in the use of clozapine in this group of patients. Method: A cross-sectional survey involving six early intervention... Read More about Prescribing pattern of clozapine and other antipsychotics for patients with first-episode psychosis: a cross-sectional survey of early intervention teams.

TechCare: mobile assessment and therapy for psychosis - an intervention for clients in the Early Intervention Service: A feasibility study protocol (2016)
Journal Article

OBJECTIVES: Technological advances in healthcare have shown promise when delivering interventions for mental health problems such as psychosis. The aim of this project is to develop a mobile phone intervention for people with psychosis and to conduct... Read More about TechCare: mobile assessment and therapy for psychosis - an intervention for clients in the Early Intervention Service: A feasibility study protocol.

Effect of a Multicomponent Behavioral Intervention in Adults Impaired by Psychological Distress in a Conflict-Affected Area of Pakistan: A Randomized Clinical Trial (2016)
Journal Article

Importance The mental health consequences of conflict and violence are wide-ranging and pervasive. Scalable interventions to address a range of mental health problems are needed. Objective To test the effectiveness of a multicomponent behavioral... Read More about Effect of a Multicomponent Behavioral Intervention in Adults Impaired by Psychological Distress in a Conflict-Affected Area of Pakistan: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Prevalence of nonaffective psychosis in intellectually disabled clients: systematic review and meta-analysis. (2016)
Journal Article

Epidemiological studies report high rates of schizophrenia in individuals with intellectual disability (ID). However, this subject has not been reviewed systematically. We aim to review studies that report the prevalence of nonaffective psychosis in... Read More about Prevalence of nonaffective psychosis in intellectually disabled clients: systematic review and meta-analysis..

Reporting and understanding the safety and adverse effect profile of mobile apps for psychosocial interventions: An update (2016)
Journal Article

Recent years have seen a rapidly increasing trend towards the delivery of health technology through mobile devices. Smartphones and tablet devices are thus becoming increasingly popular for accessing information and a wide range of services, includin... Read More about Reporting and understanding the safety and adverse effect profile of mobile apps for psychosocial interventions: An update.

Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis (CBTp) for Schizophrenia: Literature Review and Meta-analysis (2016)
Journal Article

There is a great deal of evidence supporting the use of CBT for psychosis (CBTp). In fact, CBTp is recommended by the National Treatment Guidelines in both the U.K. and the U.S. The availability of CBTp, however, remains an issue due to a variety of... Read More about Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis (CBTp) for Schizophrenia: Literature Review and Meta-analysis.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for psychosis based Guided Self-help (CBTp-GSH) delivered by frontline mental health professionals: Results of a feasibility study (2016)
Journal Article

Availability of Cognitive Behavior Therapy for psychosis (CBTp) is limited in spite of strong evidence base. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of a CBTp based Guided Self-help (CBTp-GSH) in comparison to Treatment As Usual (T... Read More about Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for psychosis based Guided Self-help (CBTp-GSH) delivered by frontline mental health professionals: Results of a feasibility study.

Development of fixed dose combination tablets of aripiprazole plus divalproex sodium and their simultaneous determination using HPLC-UV (2016)
Journal Article

A vast majority of psychiatric patients are effectively treated with combination of drugs to improve efficacy and adherence, but due to limited research and development in fixed dose combination (FDC) in psychiatry, these products are not commonly av... Read More about Development of fixed dose combination tablets of aripiprazole plus divalproex sodium and their simultaneous determination using HPLC-UV.

Development, Testing and Reporting of Mobile Apps for Psycho-social Interventions: Lessons from the Pharmaceuticals. (2015)
Journal Article

The mobile Health offers great potential for delivery of Psycho-social Interventions. So far, the researchers have focused mainly on efficacy, and to some extent feasibility of Psycho-social Interventions. Poor reporting of development and initial te... Read More about Development, Testing and Reporting of Mobile Apps for Psycho-social Interventions: Lessons from the Pharmaceuticals..

Problem Management Plus (PM+) for common mental disorders in a humanitarian setting in Pakistan; study protocol for a randomised controlled trial (RCT) (2015)
Journal Article

Background In humanitarian settings common mental disorders (depression, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder) are highly prevalent. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed Problem Management Plus (PM+), a 5-session, individual... Read More about Problem Management Plus (PM+) for common mental disorders in a humanitarian setting in Pakistan; study protocol for a randomised controlled trial (RCT).