Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health最新文献

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the delivery of mental health services, leading to the development of telepsychiatry.

Aim: The present study investigates the effectiveness of telephone-delivered treatment for psychological disorders of COVID-19 survivors in Tehran, the capital of Iran.

Methods: In this non-randomized controlled trial, 91 COVID-19 survivors, primarily residents were enrolled. Participants completed a baseline questionnaire and a psychological screening questionnaire. The intervention included the telephone-based psychological services provided by trained psychiatric residents. The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Checklist (PCL) was administered to assess the presence of PTSD symptoms. Symptoms of anxiety and depression were measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire.

Results: The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) adjusted mean difference was significantly lower in the intervention group than in the control group. There was a significant negative correlation between the Spost-GHQ score and history of going to the clinic and history of psychiatric disorders, but no relationship with the history of hospitalization. All participants completed the satisfaction form, with almost half of them being "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the telehealth calls.

Conclusion: Telephonic delivery of psychological services showed an effective way of providing evidence-based psychological support during the pandemic. This telehealth program can offer much-needed assistance to individuals with COVID-19 improving their psychological wellbeing.

Background: Alexithymia has been found to be associated with several somatic illnesses, such as cardiovascular, indicating that it might be a risk factor for early death in the long-term course of post-myocardial infarction. From the cardiology perspective, the aim was to collect current evidence about the relationship between alexithymia and somatic illness.

Methods: The literature was synthesized and summarized in a narrative format. The literature search was carried out in PubMed. Pertinent studies published in the last 50 years written in English were included and organized by three main topics ("The relation between alexithymia and somatic illness from the cardiology perspective"; "How do assess alexithymia?"; "Treating alexithymia") to be discussed.

Results: High alexithymia is a dimensional trait that affects around 10% of the general population and up to 55% of people with essential hypertension. Also, the link between alexithymia and cardiovascular activity has been pointed out. There are several validated tools to assess alexithymia, as well as treatment options.

Conclusion: Knowledge about the main features of alexithymia, as well as its assessment and treatment, can promote a multifactorial approach to the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of cardiac diseases.

Background: This article identifies the factors associated with burnout among dentists in the state of Bahia, Brazil, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A cross-sectional study, conducted between November 2020 and February 2021, of 251 dentists, selected by snowball sampling. Sociodemographic, occupational, and epidemiological information was collected in an electronic form. Burnout was evaluated through the Maslach Burnout Inventory; anxiety through the Beck Anxiety Inventory; and quality of life through the WHOQol-BREF questionnaire. Multiple linear regression was used to identify factors associated with variations in levels of the three burnout dimensions.

Results: The mean levels of the burnout dimensions were: Emotional Exhaustion: 28.9 ± 8.9 (SD); Depersonalization = 8.2 ± 6.3; and Personal Accomplishment: 28.0 ± 6.2. The proportion of professionals with high Emotional Exhaustion (≥ 30 cut-off score), high Depersonalization (≥ 12 cut-off score), and low Personal Accomplishment (≤ 33 cut-off score) were 43.4%, 26.3% and 81.3%, respectively. Burnout components were associated with high anxiety; lower levels of the physical, psychological, social relations, and environmental dimensions of quality of life; less time working as a dentist; increased alcohol consumption during the pandemic, feeling safe when using personal protective equipment, and support from work fellows.

Conclusion: The dentists investigated showed moderate levels of Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization, and very low levels of Personal Accomplishment. The prevention and mitigation of burnout syndrome among dentists during a pandemic should consider several factors, such as quality of life, amount of time in the profession, use of personal protective equipment, support from fellow dentists, and alcohol consumption.

Purpose: Stuttering is a fluency disorder that mostly begins in childhood and affects many people in our societies. No standardized screening tools are available to check for stuttering in the Indian school-going population. Thus, the study aimed at developing a screening tool to identify children who stutter among the school-going population using a Delphi-based approach.

Methods: This study was carried out in four phases. During the first phase, five Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) were asked about the need for screening and the nature & attributes of a stuttering screening test for school-going children. The second phase involved constructing appropriate stimuli for the screening tool based on expert opinion, relevant literature and students' academic textbooks. The third phase involved content validation of the speech elicitation stimuli by four teachers, five SLPs and an English Lecturer teaching in a university. The fourth phase encompassed the development of differential diagnosis criteria for stuttering identification in children using a rank analysis of the expert opinions.

Results: A stuttering screening stimuli comprising age, language and culture-specific reading, picture description and narration tasks for 1^st to 10^th-standard students was developed. The contents of the tool obtained satisfactory consensus of agreement among the panel of experts. Further, the tool outlined five critical diagnostic criteria which could differentially diagnose school-going children with stuttering from typically speaking counterparts using the developed material.

Conclusion: The developed screening tool could help practicing clinicians quickly identify stuttering in school-going populations. This would enable early identification and build up the statistical data to estimate the prevalence of stuttering among the school-going population. Further studies examining the psychometric properties of the developed test are in progress.

Aims: This study aimed to assess mental health status by measuring depression and investigating the effect of physical activity in lessening the mental health burden among HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused distress and depression among healthcare workers and drastic disruptions in social, economic, and health systems worldwide.

Methods: A cross-sectional online study through google forms involved HCWs across Jordan for two months. The 10-item short form of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale Revised (CESD-R10) was used to assess depressive symptoms.

Results: The total sample was 295, females were 50.5% with mean age of 33.1 (>80% less than 40 years old), married 51.9%, 63% were physicians, 88.1% had contact with patients, and 64.7% were smokers. Depression symptoms were perceived by 59.3% of the total samples (53.1).

Conclusion: During the COVID-19-induced nationwide lockdown in Jordan, HCWs who engaged in enough physical exercise reported fewer depressive symptoms. Promoting physical exercise among HCWs may lead to better results for their mental health. Various clinical implications support promoting designated time and space for physical activity at work.

Background: The rapid spread of SARS-COV-2, characterized by its severe course in the absence of effective specific treatment for this infection, may become a significant risk factor for psycho-emotional disorders' emergence during this pandemic. One of the vulnerable groups in the current situation are first-year medical students, whose problems associated with an unfavorable sanitary-epidemiological situation and an increased infection risk are compounded by the difficulties of adapting to specific professional environments. In this situation, along with strict adherence to nonspecific prevention methods, the mass student SARS-COV-2 vaccination acquires particular importance.

Objective: To compare the attitudes of first-year medical students in Russia and Azerbaijan toward SARS-COV-2 immunization and to assess the vaccination impact on the student's psycho-emotional state during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic.

Materials and methods: The study involved 594 first-year students at the Moscow and Baku branches of Sechenov University. The Google Forms platform was used to conduct an anonymous sociological survey. To compare the psychoemotional state of vaccinated freshmen and non-vaccinated students, we used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, STAI, to assess reactive anxiety and the Beck Depression Inventory test - to diagnose depressive symptoms. The online survey was conducted during the fourth wave of coronavirus infection. WHO official sources were used to analyze the current epidemiological SARS-COV-2 situation during the study data provided by the Russian Federal Service on Customers' Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Surveillance and JHU CSSE. Statistical analysis was carried out using RStudio.

Results: The study results showed that vaccination coverage of first-year students at the Moscow branch of Sechenov University during the fourth wave of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic was 42,9±5,13%, at the Baku branch - 69,6±5,86%. The lack of reliable information about anticovid vaccines, indicated by a third of all respondents, may largely determine the motivated participation in the vaccination SARS-COV-2 campaign. The role of medical school in imparting knowledge about active SARS-COV-2 immunization to medical students was found to be insignificant. It was shown that the percentage of students willing to recommend SARS-COV-2 vaccination to the people around them and thereby contribute to increasing collective immunity level significantly depends on the percentage of students vaccinated. It was proved that vaccinated students were characterized by significantly greater psychological stability regardless of their study place.

Conclusion: Vaccination is not only a good preventive measure against the infection spread but also a significant factor in stabilizing the psycho-emotional state of first-year students, which significantly affects the quality

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients have a greater prevalence of anxiety and depression. Proinflammatory cytokines are elevated in RA. We aim to evaluate the association between systemic inflammation in RA and anxiety and depression.

Methods: There were 31 RA patients, 16 with active disease activity and 15 in remission state; they were assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and for RA disease activity using Disease Activity Score of 28 joints (DAS28) - CRP (C-reactive protein). Serum proinflammatory cytokines were measured, including interleukin (IL)-6, IL-17, and Tumour Necrosis Factor-alpha (TNF-α).

Results: Among 31 patients, ten patients showed anxiety symptoms, 19 patients showed depression symptoms, and two displayed mixed symptoms. Serum TNF-α levels were significantly higher in active disease than in the remission group (p-value 0.006). There was no association or correlation between proinflammatory cytokines to anxiety and depression symptoms in the active disease and remission groups.

Conclusion: This suggests that other factors besides disease activity and state of systemic inflammation may cause anxiety and depression in RA patients.

Background: It is well established that a wide range of psychological disorders are influenced by the way people live, with lifestyle-related factors playing a substantial role. During the past decade, the effects of major disasters on mental health have drawn a lot of attention.

Aim: In this review, we compare clinical studies reporting a link between COVID-19 and other pandemics and mental health. Importantly, we also shed light on Tau protein and neurotransmitters as neurobiological factors that might explain this link.

Methods: A thorough PubMed search was done to gather and summarize published data on the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on mental health. Additionally, these studies were compared to previous research published on PubMed, triggering other pandemic and epidemic impacts on mental health.

Results: The COVID-19 epidemic has had the biggest impact on raising awareness about mental health. Moreover, the past century has seen an increase in the frequency of disease outbreaks like MERS-CoV, Ebola, and Influenza, which all had an impact on mental health. However, the exact role of these epidemics on mental health and brain functions is poorly understood.

Conclusion: Future research on the underlying pathways may yield essential information for the treatment and prevention of prospective mental diseases in light of the ongoing decline in mental health during the past 10 years.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic was detrimental to lifestyle and behavior. In this investigation, changes in reading habits during the pandemic were examined.

Methods: The study is cross-sectional and survey-based. 1844 individuals completed an online survey about sociodemographic and reading habits during COVID-19. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between the study variables.

Results: Most of the participants were active readers (71.5%-83.2%). Fewer (13.8-18.0%) reported a decrease in reading, while about half reported a no change, and 1/3^rd reported an increase. Changes in reading habits were related to age, education, job type, and income.

Conclusion: About half of the participants during the pandemic reported a change in reading habits. Interventions to further enhance reading among people during the pandemic might help ameliorate the negative impacts of the pandemic.