Oxytocin Substitution Therapy in Patients With Central Diabetes Insipidus

Questionnaire with scores ranging from 1 ("almost never") to 4 ("almost always"). The STAI has two sub-scales, the State-Anxiety Scale (STAI-S; 20 items) and the Trait-Anxiety Scale (STAI-T; 20 items). The STAI-S evaluates the current state of anxiety, asking how respondents feel "right now," using items that measure subjective feelings of apprehension, tension, nervousness, worry, and activation/arousal of the autonomic nervous system. The STAI-T evaluates relatively stable aspects of "anxiety proneness," including general states of calmness, confidence, and security. The total scores range from 20 to 80, with higher scores indicating more pronounced anxiety. A score above 39/80 indicates clinically significant anxiety symptoms.

The EmBody and EmFace subtasks comprise each of 42 stimuli showing body or facial expressions of angry, happy, or neutral affect. Stimuli last 1.5 seconds at 24 frames per second and are geometrically and optically standardised to prevent biases induced by ethnic cues. Each trial consists of one point-light display (PLD), followed by a response window during which participants are asked to indicate via mouse input which emotion they believe was portrayed in the PLD in a three-option forced-choice format (angry-neutral-happy). The total correct classification scores range from 0 to 42 (for each sub-task), with higher scores indicating more correct recognition of facial & body expressions.

The FERT assesses the recognition of basic emotions. The task includes ten neutral faces and 160 faces that express one of four basic emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, anger, and fear), with pictures morphed between 0% (i.e., neutral) and 100% in 10% steps. Stimuli are shown in random order for 500 ms, followed by the rating screen, where participants have to indicate the correct emotion. The outcome measure is accuracy (proportion correct).

The computer-assisted test consists of 40 photographs that showed people in emotionally charged situations. To assess cognitive empathy, the participants are required to infer the mental state of the subject in each scene and indicate the correct mental state from a list of four responses. Cognitive empathy is the percentage of correct responses in the total responses. To measure emotional empathy, the subjects are asked to rate how much they feel for an individual in each scene (i.e., explicit emotional empathy) and how much they are aroused by each scene (i.e., implicit emotional empathy) on a 1-9 point scale.

The scale consists of 14 items, each defined by a series of symptoms, and measures both psychic anxiety (mental agitation and psychological distress) and somatic anxiety (physical complaints related to anxiety). The physician/psychologist is instructed to assess the extent to which the patient displays the given criterion. Each item is independently scored on a scale of 0 (not present) to 4 (severe), with a total score range of 0-56 (<17 indicates mild severity, 18-24 mild to moderate severity, and 25-30 moderate to severe).

The TAS 20 has a three- factor structure: difficulty identifying and describing feelings and externally oriented thinking. It includes 20 items with scores ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The total scores range from 20 to 100, with higher scores indicating worse alexithymia. A score of ≥61 indicates alexithymia (difficulty understanding one's emotions), a score of 52 to 60 indicates possible alexithymia, and a ≤51 non-alexithymia.

The AQ consists of 50 items, with four choices for each item from "definitely agree" to "definitely disagree" and a total score from 0 to 50. A score above the proposed cut-off of 29 highlights significant traits of autism

It uses 21 items ranked from 0 (symptom absent) to 3 (severe symptoms) to measure the severity of depression. The minimum score is 0, and the maximum score is 63. In non-clinical populations, scores above 20 indicate depression. In those diagnosed with depression, the score ≤16, mild mood disturbance; 17 to 20, borderline clinical depression, 21 to 30, moderate depression, and score ≥31, severe depression.

A telephone interview with a close third individual can be conducted to provide a subjective assessment at the beginning and the end of the treatment phase. Assessment will be done by rating 10 socio-emotional items such as "closeness to others," "anxious behaviour daily life," "empathic feeling," etc., by using unidirectional 100-point or bidirectional -50/+50-point visual analogue scales.