The importance of relationships in the process of helping people suffering from schizophrenia

The article presents issues related to the importance of relationships in the process of helping people suffering from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is one of the most severe mental-health disorder, in its course it often leads to mental disability. Therefore, the mental disability and initiating the recovery process of people with schizophrenia are the most important and central concepts of the text. Working with a patient suffering from schizophrenia aims at preventing disability and minimizing its consequences, and the success of these actions should be measured by the degree to which a disabled person is able to work independently, fulfil daily family and home duties and manage their free time. Creating a good or sufficiently good therapeutic relationship with a person suffering from schizophrenia is a complex configuration of many factors: from purely behavioural and information-sharing to those related to a sense of genuine closeness. The list of factors influencing creation of a therapeutic relationship can be elaborated based on various assumptions, some may emphasize the factor of patients' disability, others – cognitive deficits, and still others may be created based on existential assumptions. In this article, particular emphasis is placed on the area of psychosocial rehabilitation with its specific goals and the role of empathy and therapeutic relationship in the process of recovery of people with mental disorders.

State of the Reform of Legal Capacity in Chile

The Chilean legal regulation of disability has advanced towards an adequate legal framework for the progressive development of state practices respectful of the rights of people with disabilities. The ratification of the CRPD (2008) has been followed by an increasing amount of legislation directed to the inclusion of people with disabilities. The most important of this new disability regulation is the Law 20422 [on equal opportunities and social inclusion of people with disability]. Chile, in this way, can be regarded as a slow but persistent student of the teachings of the CRPD. Despite these positive developments, certain obligations under the CRPD are still pending, especially clear in the legal regulation affecting mental disability. The controversies surrounding legal capacity and mental health law are probably the most important issues surrounding the hesitation to carry out a reform.

Neural Network Based Mental Depression Identification and Sentiments Classification Technique From Speech Signals: A COVID-19 Focused Pandemic Study

COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) was declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2020. This led to previously unforeseen measures that aimed to curb its spread, such as the lockdown of cities, districts, and international travel. Various researchers and institutions have focused on multidimensional opportunities and solutions in encountering the COVID-19 pandemic. This study focuses on mental health and sentiment validations caused by the global lockdowns across the countries, resulting in a mental disability among individuals. This paper discusses a technique for identifying the mental state of an individual by sentiment analysis of feelings such as anxiety, depression, and loneliness caused by isolation and pauses to the normal chains of operations in daily life. The research uses a Neural Network (NN) to resolve and extract patterns and validate threshold trained datasets for decision making. This technique was used to validate 2,173 global speech samples, and the resulting accuracy of mental state and sentiments are identified with 93.5% accuracy in classifying the behavioral patterns of patients suffering from COVID-19 and pandemic-influenced depression.

Impact of Giant Cell Arteritis and Its Treatment on the Patient's Quality of Life: A Single-Center Self-Assessment Study

Little is known about the impact of giant cell arteritis (GCA) and its treatment on patient-reported physical, mental, and psychic quality of life (QoL). In this monocentric study, a questionnaire was sent to the 100 last patients diagnosed with GCA and followed-up in a single tertiary center. Their physical, mental and psychic status were self-assessed via close-ended questions, the 12-item short form survey (SF-12) and the 15-item geriatric depression scale (GDS). We aimed to identify parameters that were significantly associated with moderate-to-severe disability in both physical and mental domains. Ninety patients were analyzable. Moderate to severe physical disability was found in 41 (46%) patients. In multivariate analysis, walking difficulties (OR, 95% CI 8.42 [2.98–26.82], p <0.0001), muscle mass and strength reduction (OR, 95% CI 4.38 [1.37–16.31], p = 0.01) and age >80 (OR, 95% CI 4.21 [1.44–13.61], p = 0.008) were independent findings associated with moderate to severe physical disability. Moderate to severe mental disability was found in 30 (33%) patients. In multivariate analysis, depressive mood (OR, 95% CI 11.05 [3.78–37.11], p < 0.0001), felt adverse events attributable to glucocorticoids (OR, 95% CI 10.54 [1.65–213.1], p = 0.01) and use of immune-suppressants (OR, 95% CI 3.50 [1.14–11.87], p = 0.03) were independent findings associated with moderate to severe mental disability. There was a statistically significant negative correlation between GDS and the physical and/or mental disability scores (GDS and PCS-12: r = −0.33, p = 0.0013; GDS and MCS-12: r = −0.36, p = 0.0005). In conclusion, this study identified via a self-assessment of patients with GCA some medical and modifiable findings that significantly affect their physical and mental quality of life. A better knowledge of these factors may help improve the care of GCA patients.

Effectiveness Study of Typical and Atypical Antipsychotics on Patients with Schizophrenia using WHO Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS 2.0)

Background and Objectives: Schizophrenia is the commonest and one of the best known mental disorder which usually starts before 25 years of age, leading to significant disability in both behavioural and social life. Usually the person with any mental disability has to face social ignorance, this further leads to deterioration of their health and productivity. The deterioration of the health is not only due to the course of the disease but also may be due to treatment by some of the antipsychotics, which are the main drugs for the schizophrenia management. So, the present study has been designed to determine the effectiveness of typical and atypical antipsychotics in patients with schizophrenia in terms of disability reduction caused by them using WHODAS 2.0. Methods: After taking ethics committee approval and informed consent from study participants this prospective, observational, questionnaire based study has been conducted in the Department of Psychiatry and Pharmacology of V. S.S. Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Burla, Odisha using WHODAS 2.0 in patients suffering from schizophrenia. Results: Atypical antipsychotics lead to more reduction in disability in patients with schizophrenia than typical antipsychotics both at 6 and 12 month duration. On comparing the various atypical antipsychotics used in the study, there was no significant difference among them. Conclusion: Based on the above findings, it can be concluded that atypical antipsychotics are more effective than typical antipsychotics in terms of disability reduction. The findings may help clinicians to get better insight in the management of schizophrenia.

Predictors for depressive symptoms by four types of disability

This study aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between disability and depressive symptoms, by comparing four types of disability in community-dwelling individuals with disabilities in South Korea. A total of 3347 South Koreans with disabilities from the second wave of the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled was utilized. Depressive symptomatology was assessed by whether the participant had experienced depressive symptoms for more than two weeks during the past year. A multivariate logistic regression model was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) for depressive symptoms, and a Cox proportional hazards model to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) for two-year survival analysis. Persons who acquired mental disability from accident or industrial disaster and persons with congenital physical-internal disability were at higher risk for depressive symptoms. Maintaining employment was found to be an effective way to decrease the risk of depressive symptoms in persons with physical-external disability, sensory/speech disability, or mental disability. In contrast, in physical-internal disability, retaining normal ability to work seemed to be the key to reduce the risk of depressive symptoms. Predictors of depressive symptoms were found to differ depending on the type of disability. Such differences should be reflected in clinical and policy-level interventions to address the specific psychiatric needs of persons with different disabilities.

Autism-Current Status and Challenges in Pakistan

Autism is a group of neuro-developmental disabilities. It has an early-onset and can be diagnosed up to 3 yearsof age. It is characterized by disturbances in child's socialization, communication and cognitive abilities, and anunusual repetitive and restricted behavior. The majority of subjects have comorbid conditions. Males are more1 affected than females.1 The prevalence of autism is increasing in the world that could be due to improvement in1 diagnostic procedures and awareness in public and its worldwide prevalence is around 1%.1In Pakistan, there is a lack of widespread awareness and understanding about autism. We do not have exactprevalence data on this disease in Pakistan. However, according to the Autism Society of Pakistan, there are2 probably 350,000 children with this disease in the country.2 But the actual prevalence is believed to be muchhigher. Many cases remain undiagnosed because of unawareness, lack of medical facilities and stigma that is3 attached to mental conditions in Pakistan. In Pakistan, the distribution of disabilities includes mentalretardation (MR), hearing impairment, visual impairment and physical disability. Autism is not considered as adisability in Pakistani society. Moreover, the term mental disability or cognition problem is considered as asocial stigma or disgrace. Therefore, many people do not disclose the condition to avoid stigma. Anotherimportant reason of undiagnosed cases is lack of medical facilities and untrained doctors that categories autism under intellectual disability that is another condition. Many people especially from rural areas opt traditional therapies or go to preachers for healing.