Perceived stress, quality of life, and coping skills among patients with schizophrenia in symptomatic remission

Background Schizophrenia is one of the worst diseases with its ubiquitous challenges due to its unique psychopathology and life events. Patients with schizophrenia use various coping strategies to overcome distress. The aim of the study was to evaluate the association between perceived stress, quality of life, and coping skills in patients with schizophrenia in remission. A total of 48 consecutive patients of schizophrenia, in remission, attending outpatient department of psychiatry at Academic hospital, South India, who satisfied the inclusion and exclusion criteria were recruited for the present study. The participants were assessed on Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale, Ways of Coping Checklist – Revised and Perceived Stress Scale and WHO Quality of Life. Results were analyzed using appropriate statistical package software v 16.0. Result Highest medial was found in self-controlling and positive reappraisal coping skills. Distancing is associated with high physical domain of quality of life whereas patients with good social support score more in social and physical domain of quality of life. Conclusion Patients with history of schizophrenia even though in remission dwell a stressful life. They often need different kind of social support or cognitive aids. In that view, studying their stress level, ability to cope with it, and quality of life will help us to manage them in better way.

Effects of Physical Coordinate Clustering on Boundary Vorticity Approximations in von Mises Coordinates

Forward finite difference expressions of first-order accuracy for boundary vorticity on a solid boundary are evaluated in this work when the physical coordinates are clustered and mapped using von Mises coordinates. Results show that schemes using in-field grid points do not improve solutions obtained. Results also show that the finer the grid used in the physical domain, and the more clustered it is, improves the boundary vorticity values in the computational domain. The “best” expressions forward finite difference expressions are identified when two, three, four and five grid points are used.

The Influence of Spatial Position on Affect

<p>Conceptual metaphor theory posits that the physical domain (e.g. the vertical dimension) is used to understand abstract concepts (e.g. affect); creating expressions such as, “falling into a deep depression.” Previous research concerning vertical metaphors has found that people more rapidly process positive and negative words when the valence was metaphorically consistent with vertical position (Meier & Robinson, 2004) and that mood traits were metaphorically consistent with vertical attentional biases (Meier & Robinson, 2006). The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of vertical perceptual biases on mood; whether shifting perception could have an effect upon the emotional experience of an individual. In Experiment 1, vertical attention was manipulated by having university students move letters upwards or downwards on a computer screen, with measures of mood completed before and after the manipulation. In Experiment 2, participants completed the same task, but moved schematic faces that were either happy or sad. In both experiments vertical attention was biased; however a significant change in mood state was produced only when schematic faces were used as stimuli in the task. The results suggest that shifting an individual’s vertical perception can influence their mood, when the task is emotionally arousing.</p>

The Influence of Spatial Position on Affect

<p>Conceptual metaphor theory posits that the physical domain (e.g. the vertical dimension) is used to understand abstract concepts (e.g. affect); creating expressions such as, “falling into a deep depression.” Previous research concerning vertical metaphors has found that people more rapidly process positive and negative words when the valence was metaphorically consistent with vertical position (Meier & Robinson, 2004) and that mood traits were metaphorically consistent with vertical attentional biases (Meier & Robinson, 2006). The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of vertical perceptual biases on mood; whether shifting perception could have an effect upon the emotional experience of an individual. In Experiment 1, vertical attention was manipulated by having university students move letters upwards or downwards on a computer screen, with measures of mood completed before and after the manipulation. In Experiment 2, participants completed the same task, but moved schematic faces that were either happy or sad. In both experiments vertical attention was biased; however a significant change in mood state was produced only when schematic faces were used as stimuli in the task. The results suggest that shifting an individual’s vertical perception can influence their mood, when the task is emotionally arousing.</p>

Mapeamento dinâmico da dor aos três, seis e nove meses após a cirurgia do câncer de mama / Dynamic pain mapping at three, six and nine months after breast cancer surgery

Purpose: To map pain frequency and pain intensity according to activities in the physical domain of the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand Questionnaire (DASH), at three, six and nine months after breast cancer surgery. In addition, to verify the correlation between upper limb function and pain intensity. Methods: This is a prospective cohort study, with follow-up at three time points. 22 Brazilian women diagnosed with breast cancer were included at three months after breast surgery. They performed the DASH questionnaire, the Body Pain Diagram and the Visual Analogue Scale. Frequency measures were used to analyze the frequency and intensity of pain in the items of the physical domain of the DASH. Pearson's correlation coefficient between pain intensity and the DASH total score at the three different times was calculated, a 95% confidence interval was set. Results: For twenty-two women at three, six and nine months after surgery, the body area with the highest pain frequency was the upper limb (UL) homolateral to the surgery, although, the contralateral UL was also cited as one of the areas with the highest pain frequency at sixth and ninth month. Pain intensity at three and six months remained mild and moderate in ninth month. The DASH activities with the highest pain frequency were: “putting something on a shelf above your head”, “doing heavy household chores” and “carrying a heavy object”. The correlation between pain intensity and function of the UL contralateral to surgery at nine months was strong (r=0,718; p0.01). Conclusion: The body area with the highest pain frequency at all three times points of analysis was the UL homolateral to the surgery, although the contralateral UL was also present in sixth and ninth month. There was an increase in pain intensity over time. The most painful activities were those that required large amplitudes in different planes of motion. At the ninth month, pain in the contralateral UL showed a strong correlation with limb dysfunction.

Quality of life of COVID-19 recovered patients in Bangladesh

Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) quickly surged the whole world and affected people’s physical, mental, and social health thereby upsetting their quality of life. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the quality of life (QoL) of COVID-19 positive patients after recovery in Bangladesh. This was a study of adult (aged ≥18 years) COVID-19 individuals from eight divisions of Bangladesh diagnosed and confirmed by Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) from June 2020 to November 2020. Given a response rate of 60% in a pilot study, a random list of 6400 COVID-19 patients was generated to recruit approximately 3200 patients from eight divisions of Bangladesh and finally a total of 3244 participants could be recruited for the current study. The validated Bangla version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire was used to assess the QoL. Data were analyzed by STATA (Version 16.1) and R (Version 4.0.0). All the procedures were conducted following ethical approval and in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The mean scores of QoL were highest for the physical domain (68.25±14.45) followed by social (65.10±15.78), psychological (63.28±15.48), and environmental domain (62.77±13.07). Psychological and physical domain scores among females were significantly lower than the males (p<0.001). The overall quality of life was lower in persons having a chronic disease. Participants over 45 years of age were 52% less likely to enjoy good physical health than the participants aged below 26 years (AOR: 0.48, CI: 0.28–0.82). The quality of life of employed participants was found 1.8 times higher than the unemployed (AOR: 1.80, CI: 1.11–2.91). Those who were admitted to hospitals during infection had a low QoL score in physical, psychological, and socials domains. However, QoL improved in all aspect except the psychological domain for each day passed after the diagnosis. These findings call for a focus on the quality of life of the COVID-19 affected population, with special emphasis given to females, older adults, unemployed, and people with comorbidities.

Social-Aware Caching Strategy Based on Joint Action Deep Reinforcement Learning

Caching in device-to-device (D2D) networks is emerging a promising trend, which enables to reduce backhaul traffic. Moreover, social interaction among users influences the performance of overall system network. Therefore, it is crucial to consider social attributes in the D2D networks to develop a caching strategy to resolve the problem of unbalanced content distributed. In this paper, we consider two types of users according to their activeness, i.e., active users and inactive users. Inactive users assist active users cache contents during off-peak periods and provide the contents to the active users during peak periods to relieve the pressure of base station (BS). In addition, caching system model is divided into physical domain model and social domain model. In physical domain, the quality of communication links is judged by the delay between D2D users. In social domain, based on a real-world dataset, CiaoDVD, we calculate user similarity in three dimensions and obtain user trust by a trust topology to measure user relationships. Finally, in order to maximize the cache hit ratio, a joint action deep Q -networks (JADQN) framework is proposed to pair the active users with inactive users and distribute the contents to inactive users. Simulation results indicate that the proposed strategy improves the cache hit ratio by 42.9% and reduces the download delay by 48.8% compared with least frequency used (LFU) algorithm, which validates the effectiveness of our method.

COMPLEMENTARY APPROACHES IN DENTISTRY: A REVIEW

Understanding the philosophy behind any health system is signicant because this determines the direction and the treatment methods. The term complementary dentistry (CD) is preferable and more consistent than "unconventional dentistry" because the CD meshes very well with conventional clinical practice. Dental practitioners should learn about the CD and be aware of evidence on the safety and effectiveness of treatments and routine procedures. These practices have been associated with religious beliefs and the spiritual domain, and the physical domain. Therefore, improved education in critical thinking, research, science, medicine, behaviour, communication, and patient management is required. This review aims to focus on the complementary approaches that can be helpful in dental practices. The article reviews various unconventional approaches based on advanced PubMed Central (PMC), Cochrane database, Wiley online search of the English language literature from the year 2000 to the present in order to help us select the most suitable approach among them fullling the desired criteria of being safe, economically viable, having a scope to be used for successful prognosis and possibly not requiring any special considerations to interpret the results.

Severity Level and Quality of Life of Post-Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients

Severity level is one of the variables used to determine the treatments of acute coronary syndrome patients. There are many ways to see the success of treatment such as measuring the patient’s quality of life. This study aims to determine the correlation between severity level and quality of life among patients with post-acute coronary syndrome at Hasan Sadikin Central Hospital Bandung. This research was a quantitative study with a descriptive-analytic approach. Sampling of 100 patients with post-acute coronary syndrome patients was collected during a period of one month using consecutive sampling technique. The severity was assessed based on the stenosis number and the quality of life data were collected using the MacNew QLMI. Somers’d Gamma was used to analyze the data. Data showed that most of the patients had angina without stenosis (36%) and coronary 1 stenosis (29%). The results of the quality of life measurement show that 58% patients have a good quality of life, 64% are good in the emotional domain, 52% are good in the physical domain, and 60% are good in the social domain. Bivariate analysis (CI 95%) showed that there was a significant correlation between severity level and quality of life (p-value 0.033), as well as with the physical domain (p-value 0,008). There is a correlation between severity level and quality of life of post-acute coronary syndrome patients in Hasan Sadikin Central Hospital Bandung. Based on the quality of life domain, the severity level was significantly related to the physical-domain. Regular screening is necessary to improve the quality of life of post-acute coronary syndrome patients.