Accurate prediction of suicide remains elusive due to lack of predictive measures. Given the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale's (C-SSRS) emerging "gold-standard" status for risk assessment, studies are needed to assess its psychometric properties, particularly predictive validity. The current study adds to the limited literature by assessing the C-SSRS's internal consistency, factor structure, concurrent validity, and predictive validity. In this longitudinal study of 1,055 adults with DSM-IV diagnoses consecutively admitted to a specialized psychiatric hospital between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2014, patients completed standardized assessments, including the C-SSRS, at admission and 2, 12, and 24 weeks postdischarge. The C-SSRS evidenced excellent internal consistency (ordinal α = .95). Principal components analysis (PCA) revealed a 2-factor solution, accounting for 65.3% of the variance across items. The severity of ideation and behavioral items loaded onto the first factor, and the intensity of ideation items loaded onto the second factor. The total score, factors, and the most severe ideation single item were moderately correlated with other measures of suicidality (0.27 ≤ r ≤ 0.58; P < .0001). The summary score from the ideation/behavior factor was found to be modestly correlated with any suicide-related behavior within the 6 months following hospitalization. Receiver operator characteristics indicated that the C-SSRS performed adequately in correctly classifying any suicide-related behavior within 6 months of discharge from the hospital (AUC = 0.757, P < .001) with the total score and summary score from the ideation/behavior factor providing the best balance between sensitivity (0.694) and specificity (0.652-0.674). This study is the first to assess the factor structure of the C-SSRS in a large, high-risk sample. The measure has solid psychometric properties and merits use as a suicide risk assessment measure.

As the demand for telepsychiatry increases during the COVID-19 pandemic, the strengths and challenges of telepsychiatry implementation must be articulated to improve clinical practices in the long term. Currently, observations within US contexts are lacking; therefore, we report on the rapid implementation of telepsychiatry and workflow experiences in a psychiatric practice based within a large health care system in southeast Texas with a national catchment area. We discuss the logistics of the implementation, including modes of communication, scheduling, coordination, and capacity; the psychological effects of web-based services, including both the loss of the physical therapeutic environment and the unique interpersonal dynamics experienced in the virtual environment; and postadoption patterns of engagement with our services and with other clinical functions affected by the rapid adaptation to telemedicine. Our art therapy group programming serves as an applied case study, demonstrating the value of a well-managed web-based program (eg, patients were receptive and well-engaged, and they appreciated the continuity of accessible service) as well as the challenges (eg, the need for backup plans and technological fallbacks, managing interruptions and telecommunication learning curves, and working around the difference in resources for art and music therapy between a well-stocked clinical setting versus clients’ home spaces). We conclude from our experience that the overall strengths of telepsychiatry include receptive and well-engaged responses from patients as well as the expansion of boundaries, which provides a directly contextualized view into patients’ home lives. Challenges and corresponding recommendations include the need for more careful safety planning for high-risk patients; maintaining professional boundaries in the newly informal virtual setting; designing the physical space to both frame the patient encounter and maintain work-life balance for the therapist; allowing for delays and interruptions (including an initial acclimation session); and preserving interprofessional care team collaboration when the physical locations that normally facilitate such encounters are not accessible. We believe that careful observations of the strengths and challenges of telepsychiatry during this pandemic will better inform practices that are considering telepsychiatry adoption both within pandemic contexts and more broadly thereafter.

There is little consensus regarding outcomes assessment in borderline personality disorder treatment trials, making comparisons of results and meta-analytic studies difficult and far less generalizable. The current article highlights a range of measures frequently employed and puts forth a set of recommendations for a core battery of outcome measures in BPD treatment efforts. The proposed core battery aims to be comprehensive while minimizing patient burden, clinician time and costs. The relative brevity of the proposed core battery would engender flexibility for adding specific processes and outcome measures unique to targeted interventions and treatment models.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective for treating chronic pain, and a growing literature shows the potential analgesic effects of minimally invasive brain stimulation. However, few studies have systematically investigated the potential benefits associated with combining approaches. The goal of this pilot laboratory study was to investigate the combination of a brief cognitive restructuring intervention and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in affecting pain tolerance. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled laboratory pilot. Medical University of South Carolina. A total of 79 healthy adult volunteers. Subjects were randomized into one of six groups: 1) anodal tDCS plus a brief cognitive intervention (BCI); 2) anodal tDCS plus pain education; 3) cathodal tDCS plus BCI; 4) cathodal tDCS plus pain education; 5) sham tDCS plus BCI; and 6) sham tDCS plus pain education. Participants underwent thermal pain tolerance testing pre- and postintervention using the Method of Limits. A significant main effect for time (pre-post intervention) was found, as well as for baseline thermal pain tolerance (covariate) in the model. A significant time × group interaction effect was found on thermal pain tolerance. Each of the five groups that received at least one active intervention outperformed the group receiving sham tDCS and pain education only (i.e., control group), with the exception of the anodal tDCS + education-only group. Cathodal tDCS combined with the BCI produced the largest analgesic effect. Combining cathodal tDCS with BCI yielded the largest analgesic effect of all the conditions tested. Future research might find stronger interactive effects of combined tDCS and a cognitive intervention with larger doses of each intervention. Because this controlled laboratory pilot employed an acute pain analogue and the cognitive intervention did not authentically represent cognitive behavioral therapy per se, the implications of the findings on chronic pain management remain unclear.

In the recent years, several biomedical applications of lead zirconate titanate piezo-electric ceramic patches based on the electro-mechanical impedance technique have been reported in the literature. However, practical application of the technique on live subjects is severely hampered due to the requirement of bonding the patch with bone or cartilage with an adhesive. In addition, live subjects have skin cover over the bone. This article proposes and evaluates the feasibility of employing lead zirconate titanate patches as biomedical sensors in non-bonded configuration for assessing the physiological conditions of bones. For this purpose, a special design is proposed where the lead zirconate titanate patch is first bonded on a thin aluminum strip, which is in turn clamped securely on the biomedical subject. The proposed configuration is investigated both in vitro and in vivo. The non-bonded piezo sensors are first investigated to identify dynamic parameters of the bone through lab-based experimental study involving artificial bones. Thereafter, physiological damage and decay conditions are artificially simulated in the experimental bones and the same are correlated with changes in conductance signatures from the non-bonded piezo sensor as well as the lead zirconate titanate patch in the conventional adhesively bonded (direct bonding to the subject) configuration. The trend of the conductance signatures in the healthy and the damaged conditions from the non-bonded piezo sensor is found to correlate well with the corresponding signatures from the directly bonded piezo sensor. At the same time, the repeatability of the signatures is also found to be satisfactory. After success in bare bones, the non-bonded piezo sensor configuration is extended to monitor the condition of bones covered with skin and tissue, simulated in the lab with the aid of silicone-based coating. Finally, a proof-of-concept experiment on a live human subject is successfully demonstrated. The overall results of the study demonstrate very good prospects of employing lead zirconate titanate patches in non-bonded piezo sensor mode for monitoring the condition of human bones and other related biomedical subjects.