Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Torres

Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea | UPV/EHU · Departamento de Neurociencias

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted mental health globally, leading to a deterioration in the overall mental health of the population and changes across all healthcare levels, including emergency departments (ED). However, the evolution of the quantity and nature of psychiatric ED visits in the post-pandemic period remains...

The COVID-19 pandemic led psychotherapists to use remote psychotherapy. Considering different psychotherapy orientations, scientific literature has provided interesting results about this transition and its implications. Less is known about whether and how the online format affects manualized psychotherapeutic approaches. The present study explored...

Introduction Postpartum depression (PPD) is a prevalent mental health condition affecting women globally within the first year following childbirth. Substance use during pregnancy has been associated with an increased risk of developing PPD, but the evidence remains inconclusive. This meta-analysis aims to comprehensively assess the effects of diff...

There is a growing interest in delivering videoconferencing psychotherapy (VCP) due to the enormous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives since the beginning of severe restrictions worldwide in March 2020. Scientific literature has provided interesting results about the transition to remote sessions and its implications, considering differen...

The first years following a first-episode psychosis (FEP) are crucial. This retrospective cohort study investigates the evolution of first-episode psychosis (FEP), including substance-induced psychosis (SIP), and explores factors influencing the diagnostic conversion to Schizophrenia or Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSD). Diagnoses of patients...

Treatment with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) can cause obesity and other cardiometabolic disorders linked to D2 receptor (DRD2) and to genotypes affecting dopaminergic (DA) activity, within reward circuits. We explored the relationship of cardiometabolic alterations with single genetic polymorphisms DRD2 rs1799732 (NG_008841.1:g.4750dup -...

Background Elimination disorders are highly prevalent in childhood and often associated with clinically relevant comorbid psychological disorders. The aim of this study is to determine if, and to what extent, children with elimination disorders show higher internalizing and externalizing problems than their healthy peers. Methods A multistep liter...

Introduction Elimination disorders (ED) include enuresis, defined as wetting from 5 years, and encopresis, defined as soiling from 4 years onwards after organic causes are excluded. They are highly prevalent in childhood and often associated with clinically relevant comorbid psychological disorders. However, no systematic review or meta-analysis ex...

Clinical high risk of psychosis (CHR-P) population has become an attractive area of interest in preventing transitions to psychosis. The consequences of developing a psychotic disorder may be worse in cases of early onset. Thus, childhood and adolescence represent a critical developmental window, where opportunities to gain social and adaptive abil...

Introduction: Mentalization or reflective functioning (RF) is the capacity to interpret oneself or the others in terms of internal mental states. Its failures have been linked to several mental disorders and interventions improving RF have a therapeutic effect. Mentalizing capacity of the parents influences the children's attachment. The Reflectiv...

Evidence of alterations in emotion processing in maltreated youth has been hypothesized to reflect latent vulnerability for psychopathology. However, previous studies have not systematically examined the influence of psychopathology on the results. Here, we examined emotion recognition and learning in youth who differed in terms of presence vs. abs...

Importance: Alterations in prolactin and cortisol levels have been reported in antipsychotic naïve patients with first episode psychosis (FEP). However, it has been studied in very small samples, and inter-group variability has never been studied before. Objective: To provide estimates of standardized mean differences (SMD) and inter-group variabi...

Introduction Substance-induced psychosis (SIP) is the name given to a psychosis that starts in the context of substance abuse but persists for days and weeks with no substance use. There is as yet little knowledge about the longitudinal course of this psychosis, which suggests that significant numbers go on to be diagnosed with a severe mental diso...

Objetivo: Analizar la experiencia de los profesionales que atendieron en primera línea a los pacientes infectados durante la primera ola de la pandemia de COVID-19. Material y Métodos: Los participantes fueron reclutados entre médicos y enfermeras de varios hospitales y centros de salud en España. Sus narrativas se obtuvieron a través de tres grupo...

Introduction: COVID-19 has spread worldwide since its appearance at the end of 2019. In Spain, 99-day long home confinement was set from March 15th 2020. Previous studies about events requiring situations of isolation suggested that mental health problems may occur among the general population and, more specifically, vulnerable groups such as indiv...

This study aims to meta-analytically characterize the presence and magnitude of within-group variability across neurocognitive functioning in young people at Clinical High-Risk for psychosis (CHR-P) and comparison groups. Multistep, PRISMA/MOOSE-compliant systematic review (PROSPERO-CRD42020192826) of the Web of Science database, Cochrane Central R...

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been a global challenge. High mortality rates have been reported in some risk groups, including patients with pre-existing mental disorders. Methods: We used electronic health records to retrospectively identify people infected due to COVID-19 (between March 2020 and March 2021) in...

Background Healthcare workers (HCWs) exposed to coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) are at high risk of developing mental health concerns across several domains. The aim of this study is to determine the updated, global frequency of these outcomes. Methods A multistep literature search was performed from database inception until March 1, 2021. PRISMA/MOOSE-...

Múltiples estudios sobre primeros episodios psicóticos (PEP) hacen énfasis en la importancia de una intervención precoz, con el fin de obtener una rápida remisión y evitar recaídas 1. Existe una alta prevalencia de uso de sustancias entre estos pacientes 2 , estimándose que un tercio de los pacientes con un PEP hacen uso de alcohol y/o cannabis. Au...

Background To determine the proportion of patients in symptomatic remission and recovery following a first-episode of psychosis (FEP). Methods A multistep literature search using the Web of Science database, Cochrane Central Register of Reviews, Ovid/PsychINFO, and trial registries from database inception to November 5, 2020, was performed. Cohort...

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global phenomenon with powerful effects. The deaths and suffering, and the measures taken to mitigate the propagation, are changing the way we relate, work, and enjoy ourselves. The psychological impact on individuals and groups can only be partially known yet, but deserves examination. We focus on the specific pl...

Conduct disorder (CD) with high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CD/HCU) has been theoretically linked to specific difficulties with fear and sadness recognition, in contrast to CD with low levels of callous-unemotional traits (CD/LCU). However, experimental evidence for this distinction is mixed, and it is unclear whether these difficulties a...

Insecure attachment has been described as mediating the relationship between childhood trauma and dysfunctional personality traits in different mental disorders. Despite the role insecure attachment and childhood trauma have independently demonstrated to play as determinants of borderline personality disorder, less is known about the mediating mech...

The admission of an adolescent to a child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit has a serious impact on the entire family unit. The emotional experience of those primary caregivers has been scarcely studied qualitatively despite being recommended by previous research. This study aims to examine the experience of parents of adolescents with ment...

Background Conduct disorder (CD) rarely occurs alone but is typically accompanied by comorbid psychiatric disorders, which complicates the clinical presentation and treatment of affected youths. The aim of this study was to investigate sex differences in comorbidity pattern in CD and to systematically explore the ‘gender paradox’ and ‘delayed‐onset...

La presentación examina la insuficiente atención que reciben los T de Personalidad pese a constituir una patología grave, frecuente y ante la que se disponen de intervenciones terapéuticas eficaces y factibles. Se propone la hipótesis de que esta atención inadecuada podría ser el resultado de un "acting" global de la comunidad asistencial y de la s...

Reflexión sobre las carencias en el sistema sanitario español en la atención a los pacientes con Trastornos de Personalidad y especialmente el T Límite de Personalidad. Asombrosa indiferencia por parte de clínicos, autoridades, sociedad en general, ante la escasez de abordajes específicos dirigidos a estas patologías.

available on https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1cX0r3HQGmWrrU till March 26, 2021

Lucian Freud's value as a painter goes much beyond his condition of being Sigmund Freud's grandson. Experts see him as one of the key contemporary artists. His work penetrates the viewer and leaves a lasting impression, seldom related to pure aesthetic beauty. Characters in his paintings provide us with a bridge to explore human frailty and despair...

Aims: Non-compliance is still an important problem in psychotic patients. Although antipsychotic (AP) treatment leads to a decrease in psychotic relapses, there are no clear recommendations about how long treatment should be maintained after first-episode psychosis (FEP) and no indication of the rates and causes of treatment withdrawal in this grou...

The emergence of a collective identity, a complex social and psychological process, may be linked to a specific place and a particular urban layout. Architecture demarcates interior and exterior spaces that not only frame our relationships but can also generate a mirror image of the internal world. The authors examine relevant contributions from th...

Reduced responsiveness to emotions is hypothesized to contribute to the development of conduct disorder (CD) in children and adolescents. Accordingly, blunted psychophysiological responses to emotions have been observed in boys with CD, but this has never been tested in girls. Therefore, this study compared psychophysiological responses to sadness...

La pérdida de Horst Kächele nos empuja a una reflexión sobre su persona y su obra, centrada toda ella en el examen de los problemas del Psicoanálisis y el modo de resolverlos. Su concepción positivista de nuestra disciplina le llevó a practicar, enseñar e investigar de un modo a la vez abierto y riguroso. Abierto a opiniones diferentes, a críticas...

Less is known about the relationship between conduct disorder (CD), callous–unemotional (CU) traits, and positive and negative parenting in youth compared to early childhood. We combined traditional univariate analyses with a novel machine learning classifier (Angle-based Generalized Matrix Learning Vector Quantization) to classify youth ( N = 756;...

Background: Several quantitative studies support the effectiveness of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) psychosocial skills training group component for adolescents with impulse-control disorder and/or emotional dysregulation. However, qualitative research to assess this psychotherapeutic tool in the adolescent population is sparse. This stud...

Introduction: Substance-induced psychosis (SIP) is the name given to a psychosis that starts in the context of substance abuse but persists for days and weeks with no substance use. There is as yet little knowledge about the longitudinal course of this psychosis, which suggests that significant numbers go on to be diagnosed with a severe mental di...

Objetivos: Presentar el caso clínico de un varón de 44 años que ingresa en la Unidad de Agudos de Psiquiatría por un cuadro delirante de parasitosis. Vive en situación de calle. Es fumador de tabaco de 2 paquetes/día, bebedor de 3 cervezas/día. Reconoce consumo habitual de anfetaminas y ocasional de cocaína. Como antecedentes medico-quirúrgicos pre...

1.Objetivos se trata de presentar el caso clínico de un varón que con 19 años ingresa durante un mes en la Unidad de Agudos de Psiquiatría por desorganización conductual. Es fumador de tabaco (medio paquete/día) y de cannabis desde hace 2 años (3 porros/día). Reconoce consumo puntual de anfetaminas en los días previos al ingreso mientras se encontr...

1. Objetivos: presentar el caso de una pareja que presenta clínica psicótica compartida asociada al consumo de tóxicos. 2. Material y métodos: Se presenta la exploración psicopatológica y pruebas complementarias realizados a los pacientes. Ambos tenían antecedentes de consumo de múltiples tóxicos. En el momento de presentar el cuadro, la paciente i...

Motivo de Consulta: Varón de 30 años que acude al Centro de Salud Mental (CSM), derivado por su médico de atención primaria por sintomatología ansioso depresiva. Situación Funcional Basal: Natural de Extremadura, vive actualmente en Bilbao con la pareja. En el momento en el que se le evalúa para psicoterapia presenta aislamiento casi completo, exce...

La Psicoterapia Focalizada en la Transferencia (PFT) es una psicoterapia psicoanalítica manualizada y basada en la evidencia desarrollada por Otto Kernberg y su colaboradores en la Universidad de Cornell y dirigida a las organizaciones límites de personalidad. Su fundamento teórico parte de la Teoría de las Relaciones Objetales y otorga una importa...

Las psicoterapias, en plural, constituyen un recurso terapéutico fundamental que con frecuencia se oferta muy escasamente en el sistema público de salud mental. Los psicoterapeutas mantenemos a menudo actitudes dogmáticas que perturban la difusión de las técnicas y su implementación. Es imprescindible una perspectiva biopsicosocial real y, a la vez...

Facial emotion recognition (FER) has been described to be impaired in borderline personality disorder (BPD), especially for neutral faces. Genetic modulation of FER has been studied in healthy individuals and some psychiatric conditions, but no genetic association studies have been conducted in BPD hitherto. The main objective of our study was to e...

La ciudad de Bilbao ha sufrido una transformación notable pasando de una situación ruinosa post industrial a convertirse en un lugar atractivo para el turismo internacional. El símbolo de ese gran cambio es un edificio singular que para algunos ha constituido realmente el elemento dinamizador de todo el proceso. Me refiero como imaginan al Museo Gu...

Los humanos vivimos asediados por informaciones ominosas sobre el futuro que comunican una percepción de riesgo permanente. Si bien esa percepción nos empuja a una saludable actitud preparatoria y de prevención, pasados ciertos límites se convierte en un instrumento potencial, a veces poderoso, de control de la conducta de individuos y grupos. En e...

After reviewing the origins of the concepts of identity and self, departing from historical psychoanalytic proposals, a special focus is pointed to the complex process of identity construction in both genders, including core gender identity and gender role identity. Different ways of approaching sexual orientation and sexual behaviour are examined,...

Dominant-submissive relationships, most notably among which is the sadomasochistic relationship, are a mystery, producing many unknowns. We could focus our attention on masochistic pathology in its strictest sense, as defined in contemporary psychiatric classifications (DSM-5, ICD-10, etc.). Nevertheless, there are other scenarios in which people a...

Abordar las novedades más relevantes surgidas en el último año en el campo de las Psicoterapias supone una tarea casi imposible por su extensión. Se hace inevitable una selección que siempre será injusta e influida por las áreas de mayor interés para quien selecciona y con su trabajo clínico e investigador particular. Las contribuciones sobre psico...

Quantum Mechanics (QM) is the dominant model in Physics. Its proposals, often counterintuitive, have been repeatedly confirmed experimentally. Key aspects of QM still provoke intense controversies and lead us to reflect on our being-in-the-world. Outside Physics the key role played by the observer's Consciousness in the orthodox interpretation of Q...

The birth of a child strongly influences the way in which we adults perceive life and, therefore, our inner world. This birth, or rather the expectation of it, initiates in the father a complex process, the paternal function. Despite being a common experience, there are many open questions regarding its development and its impact on the new father....

Introduction: this paper presents an update of a previous study we conducted to explore the presence and behavior of a common orientation among the participants to a group training for therapists via their answers to an “absurd questionnaire”. Having measured a second class of trainees during their training, we are able to compare the results with...

Introduction: Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a fundamental component in social interaction. We know that FER is disturbed in patients with severe mental disorder (SMD), as well as those with a history of childhood trauma. Material and methods: We intend to analyze the possible relationship between the existence of trauma in childhood irrespect...

Mayo del 68 supone un hito histórico que señala una forma de cambiar la sociedad. Su eco sigue presente entre nosotros y nos sirve de punto de partida para analizar algunos fenómenos políticos actuales, preocupantes. Partidos actuales afirman abiertamente que su deber es despertar las emociones de las gentes y señalar quiene son los amigos y los en...

Research suggests that theory of mind (ToM) deficits are related to chronic psychosis and to firstepisode psychosis (FEP) independently of other neurocognition domains. The aim of this study was to measure the differences in ToM area in a Spanish population of FEP sample (N= 32) and in a healthy control group (N=32). A further aim was to describe t...

Spanish parliament recently issued a new law offering Spanish nationality to Sephardic Jews who so desired and could demonstrate a basic knowledge of the Spanish language and culture. This law attempted to redress a five-centuries-old injustice and was expected to unleash both criticism and praise. Surprisingly, reactions in the public or the press...

Background This is an extension of a paper published earlier. We investigated the association between the tendency to detect speech illusion in random noise and levels of positive schizotypy in a sample of 185 adult healthy controls. Materials and methods Subclinical positive, negative and depressive symptoms were assessed with the Community Asses...

This article summarises the current position of evidence-based psychodynamic psychotherapies aimed at the treatment of borderline personality disorder – mentalisation-based treatment and transference-focused psychotherapy – noting the main challenges they face, especially in the area of dissemination.

Background: Subclinical psychotic symptoms are present in the general population. Furthermore, they are quite common in diagnostic categories beyond psychosis, such as BPD patients. Methods: We want to assess the differences between 3 groups: BPD (n = 68), FEP (n = 83) and controls (n = 203) in an experimental paradigm measuring the presence of spe...

Exposure to community violence through witnessing or being directly victimized has been associated with conduct problems in a range of studies. However, the relationship between community violence exposure (CVE) and conduct problems has never been studied separately in healthy individuals and individuals with conduct disorder (CD). Therefore, it is...

The Spanish Government has issued a new law offering Spanish nationality to Sephardic Jews around the world fulfilling some characteristics. This legal movement tries to undo the decree of expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492. It has been received with a surprising lack of any significant debate (for or against the law) in Spain. The presentation expl...

It has been more than a hundred years since Alzheimer and Binswanger’s first description of vascular dementia (VaD). Ever since then,histopathology research and neuroimaging techniques have allowed the development of new pathogenic, etiologic, and treatment hypotheses.The “vascular cognitive impairment (VCI)” concept has also been developed, and it...

Las decisiones económicas son una variante de las decisiones humanas Complejidad, incertidumbre, riesgo, lógica, confianza…elementos clave en un contexto siempre interpersonal Decisiones económicas apropiadas (sanas?) o inapropiadas (insanas?). Difíciles de delimitar. Los humanos tomamos reiteradamente decisiones que nos perjudican Predecir la deci...

Facial emotion recognition (FER) is essential to guide social functioning and behaviour for interpersonal communication. FER may be altered in severe mental illness such as in psychosis and in borderline personality disorder patients. However, it is unclear if these FER alterations are specifically related to psychosis. Awareness of FER alterations...

Clinical variables. (PDF)

Comparison of the percentage of correct answer of emotion recognition in FEP, BPD and HC. Unadjusted and adjusted analyses. (PDF)

Socio-demographic variables. (PDF)

Comparison of the percentage of subjects’ attribution when they failed in FEP, BPD and HC. (PDF)

Aim: We examined the association of COMT haplotypes and plasma metabolites of catecholamines in relation to the clinical response to antipsychotics in schizophrenic and bipolar patients. Patients & methods: We studied 165 patients before and after four weeks of treatment, and 163 healthy controls. We assessed four COMT haplotypes and the plasma...

The teaching of psychoanalysis encompasses a wide array of educational stages, from undergraduate students to psychoanalytic candidates and lifelong training for professionals. Papers published in psychoanalytic journals play a fundamental role in teaching tasks. The historical separation of psychoanalytic practice from the research community and t...

The results of previous studies on a group-training program for group therapists supported the influence of group dynamics on the members’ individual choices of pictures presented to them in an “absurdum questionnaire.” The present analysis compared the responses obtained from previous studies with those from a group of psychiatric caregivers train...

Introduction Both attachment style and personality traits are closely related to individual's interpersonal patterns. Association between these constructs has been widely studied, but variability in results makes it difficult to reach definite conclusions. Similarly, dopaminergic pathways are considered to underlie some personality traits and to be...

Se presenta el caso clínico de un adolescente de 17 años de edad sin antecedentes psiquiátricos previos y con buen nivel funcional académico y social. De manera brusca comienza a presentar alteraciones de la conducta, clínica psicótica positiva, sintomatología que impresiona de negativa y una escasa conciencia de enfermedad. Durante el ingreso hosp...

Nationalist movements are emerging today everywhere in the world. Many of them display a high level of aggression and a negative attitude toward sexuality and especially female sexuality. Along with this, erotic fiction with a sadomasochistic orientation has achieved great success and has hundreds of millions of readers in the world. This collectiv...

Se presenta un caso clínico de depresión mayor psicótica y síndrome catatónico de curso crónico resistente a tratamiento psicofarmacológico tratado con terapia electroconvulsiva (TEC) y benzodiazepinas que, tras obtener una respuesta favorable, se torna progresivamente refractario. La cronicidad del cuadro catatónico provoca cambios en los patrones...

After reviewing the origins of the concepts of identity and Self, departing from historical psychoanalytical proposals, special focus is placed on the complex process of identity construction in both genders, including core gender identity and gender role identity. Different ways of approaching sexual orientation and sexual behavior are examined, i...