The effect of a shift of sensory modality on the serial reaction times of patients with schizophrenia was first reported in 1961. Zubin & Spring (1977) argued that the modality shift effect (MSE) might be a vulnerability marker for schizophrenia. A MSE has, however, also been observed in patients with depression, brain damage, alcoholism etc.

To examine if patients with schizophrenia can be differentated from patients with mood disorder on the basis of the MSE to light and tone stimuli.

To evaluate if MSE measures could be useful in the diagnostic process.

58 patients with schizophrenia, 55 patients with mood disorder, and 30 healthy controls participated in a computerbased reaction time experiment. The stimuli were short visual and auditory signals presented in a randomized sequence. Participants were instructed to press a button each time they saw or heard a signal.

The MSE to both light and sound stimuli of the patients with schizophrenia and mood disorder was significantly longer than the control group’s. There was no significant difference in the patient groups’ MSE to light stimuli; but patients with schizophrenia had a significantly longer MSE to tone stimuli than patients with mood disorder. No clear or consistent differences were observed when comparing subgroups of schizophrenia patients with positive, mixed, and negative symptoms, and mood disorder patients in manic, neutral, and depressive phases.

The MSE to visual and auditory stimuli is not specific for schizophrenia as it can also be observed in mood disorder.

1. (1) to identify the proportion of families that have at least one first degree relative (FDR) with major unipolar depression (MUD), across bipolar (BP) and schizophrenic (SC) multiplex families;

2. (2) to assess if there are significant demographic/clinic differences between these two groups.

The sample included 120 families with at least one first or second degree proband relatives diagnosed with BP or SC disorders. We selected BP and SC probands’ families that had at least one FDR with MUD, according to DSM-III-R. All families have been evaluated with Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies and selected according to the diagnostic definitions of DSM-III-R, based on the Operational Criteria Checklist. T-tests and chi-square tests used to analyze demographic and clinical differences between the two groups.

Out of the 60 BP families, 38.3% had at least one FDR with MUD; depressed relatives were predominantly female (68.7%) - sisters (35.5%), mothers (29%), daughters (3.2%). The average age of onset and length of illness was 35 and 15 years, respectively. Out of 60 SC families, 31.6% had at least one FDR with MUD; the majority of depressed relatives were females (81.8%) - sisters (42.9%), mothers (38%) daughters (4.8%). The average age of onset and length of illness was 30 and 19 years, respectively. There was no significant statistical differences between BP and SC families.

These results may support the thesis of a common genetic vulnerability to MUD, and the continuum viewpoint of affective and psychotic disorders.

The present study aims to analyze the effects of education of life skills on the reduction of mentalbehavioral disorders in students.

The present study is a quasi experimental research with pre-test and post-test. The population of this study consists of the male students of an elementary school in Savad kooh city in the school year of 2012–2013. Thirty students were selected by DASS_42 questionnaire that would evaluate the mental-behavioral disorders (depression, anxiety, and stress). They attended the life skills workshop. Questionnaires were used as a source of information. in order to analyze the data of descriptive and deductive statistics, the dependent t and Pearson correlation coefficient were calculated with the help of SPSS software.

The difference among the three scales of depression, anxiety and stress, before and after the workshop, was significant. Results also showed that there was significant relationship (p< 0,0001) among the three scales of depression, anxiety, and stress before and after the education of seven skills of living to the students.

Life skills enable people to learn what to do and how to do. Successful learning of life skills affects the feelings of the learners towards themselves and others as well. Furthermore, the changes that such skills bring about in teens can change the attitude of other people. Therefore, life skill is one of the main factors of developing the mental health.

According to the data of 2011, Russia is among the ten countries in the world with the highest suicide rate - 21.4 cases per 100 000 population. However, many aspects of the problem of suicide are not studied. This prevents the organization of the system of effective suicide prevention. in this regard special attention deserve ethnocultural factors, since they are essential to the moral and ethical attitude to the possibility of suicide and to potential willingness to formation of suicidal behavior.

Study of the rate of suicide among different nations of Russia.

Statistical analysis of suicide rate in the Russian Federation from 2005 to 2011.

The specificity of suicide situation in Russia is that suicide rates in different ethnic groups of the population has the distinction of reaching 30: from 3 per 100,000 in the Republic of Dagestan to 89.8 per 100,000 in the Nenets Autonomous District. This is due to cultural peculiarities of different ethnic groups, including the historically established their relationship to suicide.Taking in consideration this factors were elaborated the differential programs for suicide prevention. That has allowed to lower suicidal rate in average in 1.5 times for the last 7 years. That indicates the possible beneficial effects of the ethnocultural approach in suicide prevention strategies.

In planning programs suicide prevention in multinational countries should take into account the ethnocultural characteristics of the residing peoples.

This study aims to compare the extent of mental stress between mentally retarded and normal children’s parents.

The study had a post-event survey design (causal- comparative one). The sample size including 120parents with mentally retarded children and 120 parents with normal kids was selected through clustering multi-stage sampling method. Questionnaire on Resources and Stress (QRS) developed by Friedrich et al was used to examine the degree of parental stress. Accordingly, by applying statistical t-tests for independent samp and Pearson correlation coefficient, the research data were analyzed.

Results from this study showed that a significant difference was found at stress level between parents with mentally retarded children and those with healthy kids. in fact, the degree of mental stress amongst parents with mentally retarded children was turned out to be much more than that of in parents with normal children (P< 0.01).No significant difference was observed between mothers and fathers having children with mental retardation in terms of mental stress. That is, both fathers and mothers with mentally retarded kids suffered from the same degree of mental stress. Despite the fact that parents’ stress had nothing to do with child’s gender, it significantly increased with mentally retarded child’s age(P=0.01). On the other hand, the more the age of the mentally disabled child was, the more the stress of parents would be. Also, the relationship of parents’ literacy level with degree of stress was significantly different (P< 0.01).

There is little information on the dental health status and treatment needs of sub-population groups especially psychiatric in-patients in developing countries such as Iran. This study aimed to assess the oral and dental health status in hospitalized psychiatric patients.

The study was conducted in two psychiatric hospitals (Shahid Beheshti and Bahman) in the city of Kerman, Iran. The study population comprise of 193 psychiatric patients. According to the duration of the hospital stay, patients were categorized into two groups of acute and chronic. The oral and dental health of the patients were assessed using Decay, Missing, Filling Teeth (DMFT) index and Oral Assessment Guide for Psychiatric Care (OAG-PC). High score for these two scales indicated a worse oral and dental health.

The mean DMFT and OAG-PC scores of patients were 19.74±7.88 and 20.77, respectively. Univariate analysis showed that patients in chronic group had higher OAG-PC (P=0.014), but the difference of DMFT scores was not statistically significant between two groups (0.57). After controlling the effects of confounding variables the differences of the DMFT and OAG-PC scores were not statistically significant between two groups (p values = 0.88 and 0.64, respectively).

The results of the present study showed that the oral and dental health in psychiatric patients were poor. Our findings indicate that it is vital to improve the oral and dental health status of psychiatric patients and thereby the quality of life of these patients.

žDepression is a treatable medical condition and one of the most frequent causes of emotional distress in older adults žUntreated depression can delay recovery or worsen the outcome of other medical illnesses via increased morbidity or mortality žDepression is NOT a part of normal aging.

žTo determine the prevalence of depression among the elderly population žTo identify the risk factors with respect to depression in elderly.

žStudy design: Cross sectional study žStudy setting: Community based žSample size: 216 žStudy area: Southern part of urban Pune city žInclusion criteria: Age more than 60 yrs of age žStudy tool: Predesigned Questionnaire including WHO 5 Well being index and Mastering depression in Primary care version 2.2 was administered.

The prevalence of ndepression was 21.2% in the geriatric population. Widowed stae, financial dependancy,living in nuclear family and medical illnesses were the major stressors.

The present study found that widowed state,retirement,medical illness and residing in a nuclear family system are strong predictors of depression in the elderly.

žSocial support programs for the elderly must be developed to ensure their well-being. Awareness about risk factors would help in designing appropriate strategies for prevention of depressive disorders in geriatric population.

In collaborative care management (CCM) for depression, a restoration of premorbid functional status is as important as symptom reduction.

The goal of this study was to investigate if the baseline functional status of the patient (as determined by the tenth question of the PHQ-9) was an independent predictor of clinical outcomes six months after enrollment into CCM and the interdependence of clinical outcomes on functional improvement at six months.

One thousand eighty three adult patients who were enrolled in CCM for the diagnosis of major depression or dysthymia and had a PHQ-9 score of 10 or greater were retrospectively reviewed.

Using a multiple regression model for clinical remission six months after enrollment into CCM; age, race and gender were not significant predictors of remission, however, being married was (OR 1.323 CI 1.013-1.727, P= 0.040). Patients in the Extremely Difficult category had an odds ratio of remission of 0.610 (CI 0.392-0.945, P=0.028) at six months compared to the Somewhat Difficult group. Also, the odds of a patient achieving normal functional status at six months was highly correlated to clinical remission (PHQ-9 < 5) with an odds ratio of 218.530 (p< 0.001).

Depressed patients with worsening functional status at enrollment into CCM are less likely to achieve remission after six months, independent of all other variables studied. Also, improvement of a patient’s functional status at six months was highly correlated with clinical remission.

Of late, highly publicized reports have revealed that approximately half of university students report moderate levels of stress-related mental health concerns including anxiety and depression. Other research reveals that university health services are only providing services to a small percentage of these students. Universities must therefore consider the use of accessible programs that address student stress and reduce resultant anxiety and depression.

A systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing stress in university students. Studies were eligible for inclusion if the assignment of study participants to experimental or control groups was by random allocation or parallel cohort design.

Twenty-four studies, involving 1431 students were included in the meta-analysis. The findings suggest that cognitive, behavioral and mindfulness-based interventions focused on stress reduction significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety. Further, despite variations in approaches in terms of length of intervention and specific components of the intervention (including such aspects as cognitive restructuring, relaxation and meditation) with students in different programs and in different countries, these results are remarkably consistent. Secondary outcomes included lower levels of depression and cortisol.

This review and meta-analysis provides strong support that cognitive, behavioral and mindfulness-based approaches are effective in reducing the effects of stress on university students. Given the high rates of stress-related mental health problems reported by university students, universities are advised to examine means to provide opportunities for larger numbers of students to access these interventions.

Find out are exist significance and link between infection of CNS (duration, type bacterial or viral, seizures if had happen) and psychiatric problems 20 years after?

Study-Follow up 30 patients during one year treated in day care hospital. eeg controlled. Ct brain if necessary. To measure depression used Beck, Montgomery A scales.

To measure panic used Pais 3 scales.

20 years after severe infection CNS noticed that just 20% visible eeg abnormalities. No seizures, but 10 % got AE.

50% dg as panic, felt better on clonazepam.

20%depression mild, recovered on escitalopram.

10% personae disorders on therapy.

Evaluated study showed that duration of CNS infection and seizers in anamnesis after 20 years consequence in irritability eeg as well as behavior problems so needed drugs.

Bacterial infection (pneumoccoc, enteroccoc) linked in depression. As difference, viral infection linked in anxiety, panic and personal disorders.

Beck and Montgomery A scales significant improvement after therapy. Panic scales also.

The defining features of Type D personality, that is, tendencies to experience negative emotions and inability to express emotions, are the known risk factors of somatization tendencies.

Many depressive patients express their mental distress through somatic symptoms. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to investigate the relationship between Type D personality and complaints of somatic symptoms in depressive patients.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between type D personality and somatic symptom complaints in depressive patients.

Eighty-two individuals diagnosed with depressive disorder were included. Type D personality was measured with 14- item Type D personality Scale (DS14). Patient Health Questionnaire 9 and 15 were used to measure depression severity and somatization tendencies.

Two-thirds of the subjects were classified as Type D personality (63.4%). The mean PHQ-15 score of the Type D individuals was significantly higher than the remaining subjects (12.7 vs. 7.2, p=8.2E-6). The best regression model included age, PHQ-9 score and NA subscale score as predictor variables. Among these, only the coefficients of age (p=0.0015)and NA score (p=1.5E-7) was found to be statistically significant.

The result showed that Type D personality was one of the strong predictors of somatic complaints among depressive individuals. The finding that alexithymia was not shown to be a significant predictors also substantiated this discrepancy. However, it might be possible that the high correlation between NA and SI subscore (r=0.65) and between NA and TAS-20 score(r=0.44) hid the additional effects of social inhibition and alexithymia.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to assign a set of mental states to yourself and others. in bipolar disorders, alteration of social relationship can be explained by the impairment of the functioning of ToM. Deficit in ToM can be a trait marker of bipolar disorder and people in general population who has high score of hypomanic personality will be more likely to develop bipolar disorders.

The goal of this study is to study abilities in a ToM task in general population with different level of hypomanic personality.

This study examines 323 participants (23.25 ±7.74 years). Measures of hypomanic personality were evaluated by the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS) (Eckblad & Chapman, 1986). It is a self-report scale subdivided in 3 factors: social vitality, mood vitality and excitement. ToM was explored using Yoni task (Shamay-Tsoory & Aahron-Peretz, 2007) French adaptation. This test permits to distinguish the affective and the cognitive components of ToM.

Forward multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the effect of components of the HPS on the total score of ToM task. in women’s group, no subscales of the HPS have been included in the model. Conversely, the analyses performed on men revealed that the mood vitality subscale was a significant predictor of ToM abilities.

The ToM task’s score is linked to the hypomanic score but only in men sample and only for the Mood vitality subscale. This result supports that deficits in ToM can be a trait marker of bipolar disorder in healthy men population.

Regarding the increasing number of elderly people, their quality of life.

Becomes more important. Spiritual health is one of the important aspects of health status that is often neglected. This study aims to identify the relationship between spiritual well-being and quality of life among elderly people residing in Kahrizak Senior House.

It was a descriptive, correlational study. The sample included 141 elderly people residing in Kahrizak Senior House who recruited by convenience sampling. Data was collected by Spiritual Well-Being Index (SWBI) and Short Form Quality of Life (SF36) and analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficients, ANOVA, and t-test using SPSS-PC (v-16).

The mean score of quality of life was (50.36±11.3). Women’s quality of life was Significantly lower than men (P=0.000). The mean score of spiritual well-being was (96.26±17.93). There was a positive correlation between spiritual well-being and quality of life (P=0.008).

Regarding the lower levels of quality of life especially in women elderly, more.

Attention should be paid to this group of society. Awareness of the importance of spiritual well-being in caring of these people is recommended.

Comorbidity is common among adults with ADHD, including substance abuse. To our knowledge relation between ADHD and SUD has not been studied in Arab countries.

Assessment of scope of comorbidity between ADHD and SUD in Egyptian patients.

Estimating prevalence rate of adult ADHD among substance use inpatients and to compare substance use inpatients with and without adult ADHD regarding onset, and severity of SUD.

This cross-sectional comparative study was conducted in addiction treatment center at El Maamoura psychiatric hospital. One Hundred and two adult males were assessed using Arabic version of Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) for retrospective assessment of symptoms of childhood ADHD. Arabic version of Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-v1.1) Symptom Checklist was used to screen for adult ADHD. DSM IV TR criteria were used for final diagnosis.

36 patients were diagnosed as having adult ADHD (35.3%) according to DSM-IV TR criteria. Presence of adult ADHD was associated with an earlier mean age of onset of SUD (15.58 vs. 13.22 years) and larger number of hospital admissions, (6.83 vs. 3.39 times). ADHD subjects achieved a shorter mean period of abstinence (124.53 vs. 209.82 days). Data were fed to the computer using the Predictive Analytics Software (PASW Statistics 18). Significance of the obtained results was judged at the 5% level.

The results of this study confirm the high rates of adult ADHD among substance use patients mentioned in other studies. Presence of adult ADHD was associated with a more complicated course of SUD.

PTSD patients display abnormal emotional processing and bias towards negative emotion. Long latency eventrelated potentials (ERP’s) are composed of the P300 and subsequent slow wave activity. These ERP’s are hypothesized to be relevant for attentional and initial memory storage events as well as emotional processing. objectives: This study tested the hypothesis that abnormal emotional processing in PTSD is reflected in altered brain activity, as measured via ERP’s.

Detect differences in cortical activity and emotional processing in PTSD patients as compared to controls.

ERP’s were recorded from 14 PTSD and 14 control subjects while viewing emotion-laden pictures. Subjects were instructed to press a button depending on the presence of a person or human part in the picture and response time was recorded.

Long latency ERP data (300-1035 msec) showed valence dependent activity in control subjects distinguishing negative vs. positive and neutral pictures. PTSD patients, however, lacked differential activation and had similar brain activity across all picture valances, which resembled the pattern observed in controls only for negative stimuli.

[Late ERP’s 980-1035msec]

PTSD patients also exhibited longer response time.

Our results demonstrate abnormal cognitive-emotional processing in PTSD patients and may underlie overgeneralization processes that are part of this disorder.

INTERMED is a patient-centered method designed to assess bio-psycho-social case complexity in general health care. It consists in a structured interview leading to definition of 20 variables by focusing on past, present and future health needs and risks of patients. The total score supports professional decision and guides to patient-oriented care.

To describe the training process on INTERMED interview and to assess its effectiveness.

A training group of 4 doctors and 4 6th-year medical students attended two-hour meetings twice a month (December 2011– March 2012). After introductory sessions on theoretical aspects and inter-trainee simulations on interviewing and scoring techniques, students were assigned the task of producing recorded clinical material, which was used to comment on interviewing skills and practice on scoring. Individual and consensus scores were collected at the end of every session and compared statistically by means of Cohen’s kappa.

Agreement between individual and consensus scores was already considerable at the beginning of the training and improved during the course (Cohen’s kappa raised from 0.39 to 0.65). The participants were interested and motivated. They expressed satisfaction for the skills acquired during the training.

A five months 20-hour training period is a reasonable time not only for learning how to master the instrument, but also for gaining the basic skills required to build a structured interview. These skills would be useful in the whole participants’ career and allowed the implementation of INTERMED as a clinical and research tool in the Modena General Hospital.

Narcolepsy is a disorder characterized by diurnal somnolence and episodes of short duration sleep. It can occur in 0.02–0.16% of adults, generally before the age of 30.

The aim of this work is to present tolerability and treatment response of Concerta in one adult suffering from narcolepsy.

We report the case of a 28 years adult female with narcolepsy. One year ago, after a strong social stress, she manifested some symptoms of narcolepsy: excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, and visual hypnogogic hallucinations. There was no family history of sleep disorders and not experienced premorbid seizure or sleep disorder. Diagnosis of narcolepsy is based on DSM-IV criteria, polysomnography and Multiple Sleep Latency Test. Sleep latency, rapid eye movement sleep latency, and mean multiple sleep latency were 2.9, 70.1 and 1.5 min, respectively. Twenty-four hour EEG monitoring, MRI imaging of the brain and serum chemistries were normal. At the beginning because of the misdiagnosis the patient was treated with lithium and olanzapine. Patient started Concerta treatment after 1 year with 9 mg/day at the morning. Dose was increased maximum to 18 mg twice daily over a 2-weeks period.

Treatment of narcolepsy with Concerta lasted 6 month. Visual hypnogogic hallucinations and cataplexy started to improve 3 weeks after adjustments in methylphenidate dosing. Three months after the initiation of therapy, the patient is completely asymptomatic. Side effects included faster heart rate and nervousness.

This case support results from recent studies that methylphenidate is well tolerated and effective in narcolepsy.

Treatment of atypical depression (AD) modern antidepressants poorly understood, whereas the study of AD in the context of chronobiological disorders necessitates selection pathogenetically substantiated therapy.

To determine the effectiveness of agomelatine in the treatment of AD.

To compare the efficacy of agomelatine in patients with AD and melancholic depression (MD), the impact of the drug on the separate atypical symptoms, and the effect on AD in the first depressive episode (FDE), bipolar disorder (BD) and recurrent depressive disorder (RDD).

6 week monotherapy agomelatine patients with AD (n=60, main group) and MD (n=30, control group) at a dose of 25 mg/day with the possibility of increasing to 50 mg/day. Used rating scales ADDS, BDI, HDRS-17, LSEQ, GAF.

Response rate of onset in the treatment of AD was higher (third week) than in the MD (fifth week). Reduction on a scale HDRS-17 was significant at the first week of treatment in both groups (p< 0,001). of atypical symptoms better than others were reduced hypersomnia and hyperphagia. Treatment of patients with AD at FDE, BD and RDD showed a higher percentage of responders at BD (82%) than in the RDD (64.2%) and especially (p < 0,01) for FDE (40%).

Agomelatine has shown high efficacy in the treatment of AD (88.3%) and MD (83.3%), despite the opposite nature of the symptoms (insomnia and hypersomnia, decreased and increased appetite), as well as comparable efficacy in the treatment of AD in the structure as RDD and BD.