The Seoul Youth Clinic at Seoul National University Hospital provides assessment and treatment for young people at clinical and genetic high risk for psychosis and with first-episode psychosis. Participants are assessed with clinical interviews, neurocognitive tests, MRI, EEG, blood sampling, and self-report questionnaires, and are re-assessed regularly to track changes in symptoms, functioning, and response to treatment.

• Pathophysiological Mechanisms: to identify the brain abnormalities that underlie psychosis and how they change from the high-risk stage to established illness.
• Prediction of Course and Treatment Response: to find brain and clinical measures that predict the course of illness and response to treatment.
• Treatment-Related Changes and Neuromodulation Targets: to track how the brain changes with treatment and to identify circuits that can be targeted with brain stimulation.

• CHR (Clinical High Risk for psychosis): individuals who meet criteria for a psychosis-risk syndrome on the Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk Syndromes (SIPS). We follow them to understand how psychosis develops and to identify who will develop psychosis, who will not develop psychosis but remain in need of care, and who will fully recover.
• FEP (First-Episode Psychosis): patients currently enrolled within one year of the onset of psychosis. Because they are young, have had little exposure to medication, and are less affected by a long course of illness, they allow us to study brain changes that are closer to the illness itself.
• GHR (Genetic High Risk): individuals free of psychiatric symptoms who have a first-degree relative with schizophrenia and at least one additional affected relative within the third degree. Studying people with high familial loading but no symptoms allows us to examine the effects of genetic risk on the brain while minimizing the influence of symptoms.

We also follow patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorder who receive electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), with MRI and EEG acquired before and after the treatment course, and compare them with patients treated with medication alone.

Seoul Youth Clinic: www.youthclinic.org

The OCD Clinic at Seoul National University Hospital provides assessment and treatment for patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Patients are assessed with clinical interviews, neurocognitive tests, MRI, EEG, blood sampling, and self-report questionnaires, and are re-assessed regularly during treatment. Treatment includes pharmacotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, and, for treatment-refractory patients, deep brain stimulation and Gamma Knife surgery.

• Pathophysiological Mechanisms: to understand how dysfunction of the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) circuit gives rise to obsessions and compulsions, and why patients differ in onset, symptoms, and course.
• Prediction of Course and Treatment Response: to find brain and clinical measures that predict the course of illness and response to treatment.
• Treatment-Related Changes and Neuromodulation Targets: to track how the brain changes with medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, and neurosurgical treatments, and to identify circuits that can be targeted with stimulation.

• DNO (Drug-Naïve OCD): patients with OCD who have never taken psychotropic medication. Studying them allows us to examine brain abnormalities of OCD without the confounding effects of medication.
• UMO (Unmedicated OCD): patients with OCD who have been off medication for at least one month before assessment. Together with drug-naïve patients, they provide a baseline from which brain changes with treatment can be followed.
• Medicated and treatment-refractory OCD: patients currently on medication, and patients who have not responded to standard treatments. Studying them helps us understand how treatments act on the brain and why some patients do not respond.

SNUH OCD Clinic: ocd.snu.ac.kr