Iranian Journal of Psychiatry
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Winter 2006

Human beings have always experienced disasters. A disaster may be brief,but its psychological effects may last for many years. These psychological effects are increasingly well documented.Disasters affect not only those immediately involved, but also those whoknow the victims. This is perhaps particularly so when the victims arechildren. Commonly when adults hear news of disasters they ask first: What about the children? Of course, typically it is worse for the parents.In this article the definition and classification of disaster and the effects ofdisaster on survivors and their relatives will be discussed.

Parents are believed to be among the most influential adults whohave a deterministic role in the success of interventional programs onadolescents'' reproductive health. The aim of this study is to describeparents'' perceptions and attitudes towards adolescent reproductive needs,experiences and associated factors. A population-based study of 539 parents of adolescent boys, aged15-18 in Tehran was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire.bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify the factorsassociated with parents'' attitudes and their reports of adolescentheterosexual relationships. Higher education, higher income, access to satellite programs andinternet were associated with a liberal attitude among parents. Somedemographic factors including adolescents'' age, lack of adolescents''endorsement to religion, access to satellite programs, parents'' drinking, andvarious family factors such as poor parent-adolescent relationship, conflict,parental low valuation on education, parents'' low endorsement to morals,difficult parent-adolescent communication on important issues and finallyeasy communication about sex, were all among the factors associated withmore frequent reports of having a girlfriend over the last year for theadolescent males. Parents'' reports on their adolescents'' sexual relationshipswith the opposite sex highlighted a significant gap with the figure reported forthe adolescents aged 15-18 in a preceding study in 2002(3% vs. 28%). Parents should be advised to build a good relationship withteens, to maintain a close parent-teen communication, and to discuss moralsand values with teens.

The purpose of this study is to compare the executive functions children and adolescents who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) with normal children. Twenty children with ADHD were compared to 19 healthy children terms of some executive functions using the computerized version of Tower London, Continuous Performance Test (CPT), and Stroop Color Test. In "Tower of London", the performance of children with ADHD wasworse than normal children (p<0.05). In Continuous Performance Test, thecommission errors in children with ADHD were significantly more than thenormal group (p<0.01). In Stroop Test, the time spent to name the colors wassignificantly higher in ADHD group. A significant correlation was also foundbetween the performance of children on Tower of London and CPT (P<0.05). This study demonstrates that children and adolescents whosuffer from ADHD have some impairment of executive functions, particularlyplanning and inhibition to response, but not in attention.

Quality of life (QOL) assessment has been employed increasinglyto evaluate outcome among patients with chronic medical conditions. Suchassessment could be adversely affected by psychiatric disorders, co existingwith such a medical condition. A cross sectional study of 251 out-patients with diabetes mellituswas done at a Nigerian University Teaching Hospital using the CompositeDiagnostic Interview (CIDI) for psychiatric assessment and the World HealthOrganisation Quality of Life brief version (WHOQOL-BREF) to evaluate theQOL. Fifty (20%) of the 251 respondents met the ICD-10 criteria fordefinite psychiatric diagnosis. Depression accounted for 9.6% while twenty-six(10.4%) had anxiety disorder. Of the 35 respondents who performedpoorly on the overall quality of life, 17(48.57%) had psychiatric diagnosis; 9were depressed and 8 had anxiety disorder. 39 (15.5%) scored poor on thephysical health domain. 21(53.8%) of the 39 respondents with poor score hadpsychiatric diagnosis: 13 had depression while 8 had anxiety disorder. Ondomain 1 (physical health), 51 (20.3%) scored poor. Twenty-eight (54.9%) ofthe poor scorers had psychiatric diagnosis, 20 were depressed while 8 hadanxiety. 51 (20.3%) scored poor on psychological domain (domain 2) twenty-eight(54.9%) of the poor scorers had psychiatric diagnosis, 20 of which weredepressed while 8 had anxiety. 34 (13.5%) scored poor on social relations(domain 3). 19 (55.9%) of those who scored poor had psychiatric disorderand the diagnosis was depression. Physicians need to increase their surveillance of psychiatricco-morbidity in diabetes mellitus and collaborate with psychiatrists for a moreeffective liaison to improve the quality of life of patients with diabetes.

Culture may place a differential emphasis on particular emotions.The aim of this study is to find the most frequent symptoms in patients withmajor depressive disorder in Tehran. 509 patients were recruited from 5 treatment settings. The samplewas used from the project of assessing psychometric properties of CIDI in theIranian population. The patients were evaluated by conducting clinicalinterviews and using DSM-IV criteria (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)for major depressive disorder. Depressed mood (98.7%), sleep change (92.1%) and, fatigue / energyloss (89.4%) were the three highest-ranking symptoms. As cognitive factors,guiltiness and worthlessness were among the lowest ranking symptoms. Therewere no significant differences between men and women in frequency ofsymptoms with the exception of suicidal thoughts. Men had significantly highersuicidal thoughts than women. (P: 0. 01) Data were presented on the depressive symptomatology inpopulation of Tehran. Key findings included a high rate of somatic symptoms inpatients who suffered from MDD in this population.

Nicotine dependence has been identified as a critical healthproblem. This study assesses the prevalence and motivation of smokingamong Iranian junior and senior students A cross sectional study was performed using a questionnaire. Inaddition to data on frequency, motivation, initiation and cessation, thisquestionnaire included Fagerstrom items for nicotine dependency. Thecensus method was used for sampling. Thus, the questionnaire wasdistributed to all high school junior and senior students of Kerman. 3072 students participated in the study. Among them, 4.9% werenicotine dependent, 6.4% had used it occasionally during the last sixmonths and 11.5% had used it at least once in their life. Out of all thecigarette users, 80.6% had experienced smoking before the age of 15 with9.09±8.52 cigarette per day. Boys smoked significantly more than girls.More than 38% of the students had a history of smoking cessation. Themost common motivations for smoking among the students have beenidentified as smoking of the peer group and the belief that smoking isfashionable. The motivation and gender difference in smoking weresimilar to the general population. The rate of nicotine dependency was lessthan other parts of the country. However, the age of smoking initiation wasin a decreasing trend and similar to other parts of the country. High schoolstage is a very critical period for adolescents'' smoking. Therefore, for theprovision of more social skills trainings and behavioral therapies, providinginformation for decision makers is recommended.

To translate the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV axisIdisorders (SCID-I) into Persian (Farsi) and to adapt this instrument for theIranian culture. The SCID was translated into Persian using an elaborate procedure toachieve a satisfactory cross-cultural equivalent. This included forwardtranslation by bilingual (English/Persian) translators, discussion and revision ofthe translation in an expert panel of bilingual mental health professionals, pilotassessment on a small sample of Persian-speaking patients, back-translationinto English and comparison with the original SCID. In addition,understandability and acceptability of the translated items were assessed in 299patients in three psychiatric hospitals in Tehran, Iran. Some adaptations were made to bring about cross-culturalcomparability, especially with regard to conceptual differences which led todifficulties in transferring some psychiatric concepts from English to Persian.The SCID questions were generally understandable and acceptable for theIranian patients. The SCID was translated into Persian in a multi-stage process toensure a satisfactory cross-cultural equivalent.