Project Overview

The partner institute for this project is National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru. This project aims to assess any changes in the microbiome starting from the hospital admission till acute antipsychotic therapy administered as part of standard medical procedure.

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Project Progress

The project is currently in the second month and progressing. Advertisement and Recruitment of staff nurse for the project has been done. NIMHANS has finalized the questionnaire for the alcohol and tobacco use in the study with the guidance of Dr. Jayant Mahadevan, Centre for Addiction medicine, NIMHANS. Technical training has been provided to Ms. Harshitha (the nurse recruited for the project work) about using various assessment tools like brief psychiatric rating scale etc. Clinical assessment of at least 15 patients included in the pilot study was conducted by Ms. Harshitha and was discussed with the team on regular basis.

The inputs received from the team were implemented to improve the clinical assessment. NIMHANS has started patient recruitment process since the past 3 weeks, looking for cases which match the inclusion criteria in the psychiatry wards, with the help of senior residents and ward staff on daily basis. Around 55 admitted patients were assessed – none of them met the criteria set by NIMHANS, which implies either the patients were under antipsychotic medications / antibiotics, or were elderly, or having gastro-intestinal illnesses or thyroid dysfunctions. Also, NIMHANS found difficulty in recruiting the patients as most individuals are on psychotropic medications (patients on antidepressants/ mood stabilisers).