A Case Report on Acute Transient’s Psychotic Disorders

Background: Little is known about acute and transient psychotic disorders (ATPD), a diagnostic category introduced with ICD-10. Case Presentation: Acute transient psychotic disorder is a heterogeneous group of disorders characterised by the acute onset of psychotic symptoms such as delusion, hallucination and perceptual disturbances, and by the severe disruption of ordinary behaviour. Patient history: The Male patient 48 year old who was apparently admitted in AVBRH on date 08/05/2021 with chief complaint was Abnormal behaviour( taking clothes off in public ), irritability, aggressive, muttering and smiling to self from 10 days back. His parents once locked him in a room as they fear he might hurt him. He was taken to a faith healer in Pandarkawda twice by his parents. The Baba gave him some mysterious beats like bracelet to wear which eventually decreased his symptoms for 3 days but the symptoms persisted from the fourth day. This time, the Baba mixed a lemon juice, turmeric powder & kumkuma (a powder made from dried turmeric with a bit of slaked lime) and applied all over him eyes which severely inflamed & burnt his eyes. His eye injury elevated his psychotic symptoms which is why his parents took him to psychiatric OPD in AVBRH. Past History: Patient was apparently asymptomatic 2 yrs back. He was married to a woman of his parent’s choice. His marriage life was stressful and unhealthy. He was underestimated by his wife due to his low qualification and health problem. Clinical Finding: The patient has been undergone with various investigations like culture, blood tests, Physical examination and mental status examination symptomatically with antipsychotic agent and anticonvulsant such as Tab Olanzapine 10mg- HS, Tab Clonazepam 0.5mg – SOS. Medical Management: Antibiotic eye drop homatropine and eye ointment ciprofloxacin. Nursing Management: Administered fluid replacement i.e DNS and RL, eye care was done with betadine and Normal Saline solutions, eye care by administering eye drops and monitored all vital signs hourly. Conclusion: Patient was admitted to hospital with the chief complaint of muttering to self, irritability and eye injury, blisters, pus discharge from eyes and his condition was very critical and patient was admitted in AVBR Hospital ,immediate treatment was started by health team member and all possible treatment were given and now the patient condition is satisfactory.

Brian Friel in Spain: An Off-Centre Love Story

Spanish theatres are not prolific in the staging of Irish playwrights. However, the Northern Irish writer Brian Friel (1929-2015) has been a curious exception, his plays having been performed in different cities in Spain since William Layton produced Amantes: vencedores y vencidos (Lovers: Winners and Losers) in 1972. The origin of Friel’s popularity in this country may be attributed to what many theatre directors and audiences considered to be a parallel political situation between post-colonial Ireland and the historical peripheral communities with a language other than Spanish: Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia; the fact is that the number of Catalan directors who have staged works by Friel exceeds that of any other territory in Spain. However, despite the political identification that can be behind the success of a play like Translations (1980), the staging of others with a subtler political overtone, such as Lovers (1967), Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), Molly Sweeney (1994), Faith Healer (1979) and Afterplay (2001), should prompt us to find the reason for this imbalance of representation elsewhere. By analysing the production of the plays, both through the study of their programmes and interviews with their protagonists, and by scrutinising their reception, I have attempted to discern some common factors to account for the selection of Friel’s dramatic texts.

Pathways to severe mental illness care: A retrospective study of patients seeking psychiatric care at Department of Psychiatry, AIIMS, Delhi

Background and aim: Globally, very few patients with mental illness go to health care facilities to receive psychiatry treatment. This study aims to identify pathways used by patients with severe mental disorders who seek mental health care services in the psychiatry unit of AIIMS, New Delhi. Materials and methods: It is a retrospective cross-sectional study with convenience sampling technique was used, and data were collected from 123 caregivers of patients with severe mental illnesses using standardized tools like MINI, BPRS, YMRS and WHO Encounter pathway. Results: The findings revealed that 41.5% of the patients made their first contact with the faith healers, 27.6% with AYUSH medical practitioners, 14.6% with psychiatrists and 12.2% with allopathic medical practitioners. About 26% of the patients reported hallucinations as the first symptom for seeking help. In the majority of cases (96.7%), the patient’s relatives made the decision for the patient to seek treatment the first time to manage the symptoms. The psychotic symptoms (65.1%) helped the patient’s relatives to take the decision for first seek. The mean delay for seeking treatment from psychiatrists was 13.31 ± 10.6 (months). Conclusion: This study showed that a higher proportion of patients received treatment from the faith healer at the first seek, whereas only a few patients approached psychiatrist directly. Hence, there is an immense need to create awareness regarding mental illness and treatment options available.

For the Joy of the Working

Mead stayed extraordinarily busy to the end of life, engaged with such issues as nuclear safety, Earth Day, and the women’s movement. When a cancer diagnosis threatened her forward momentum, she denied it, preferring the ministrations of a faith healer over the recommendations of medical science. This choice dismayed her closest friends, but it was not entirely a departure from a life marked by curiosity about the full range of human experiences, even those that could not be explained by science. After her death, she was widely mourned and celebrated. She was, at her request, buried at the same church where she had been baptized and married for the first time. She is recognized by some fellow Episcopalians as a saint.

Magico-religious Beliefs Stigma and Help-seeking Behaviour among the Caregivers of Persons with Schizophrenia

Background: The cultural and traditional aspects of caregivers of people with mental illness have been seen widely, where the faith healers are the immediate source for treatment. Due to poor understanding of mental illness and stigma among caregivers, people often seek traditional help than modern medical treatment. Aim: To assess the Magico-religious beliefs, stigma and help seeking behaviour among the caregivers of persons with schizophrenia. Methods and Materials: Descriptive research design was used. Seventy caregivers of persons with schizophrenia attending the outpatient department of LGBRIMH, Tezpur, Assam were purposefully taken for the study. Socio-demographic datasheet, Family Interview Schedule (stigma section), Super Natural Attitude Questionnaire and General Help Seeking Questionnaire were administered. Results: Prevalence of the stigma was 100%. The majority (80%) of care giver's locality and community believe in Jadu Tona, 75.7% have performed puja/ritual/jhad-phook, 72.9% visited or consulted faith healer, 67.1% talk about or believe in bhoot pret, Jadu Tona (65.7%), Opari kasar (64.3%), 68.6% believed that performing puja/rituals/jhad-phook can change patient's behaviour. Majority 57.6% care giver showed high help-seeking behaviour while 42.4% showed low help-seeking behaviour. Majority of the caregivers seek help from the parents (5.47±1.20). Conclusion: Supernatural beliefs and stigma found to be common among the caregivers of persons with schizophrenia. Caregivers have higher help-seeking behaviour from informal groups than formal groups.

‘A disoriented vision of … fact’: Brian Friel, Francis Bacon, and Faith Healer

The Brian Friel Papers at the NLI reveal a long and relatively unexplored history of major and minor influences on Friel's plays. As the archive attests, these influences manifest themselves in ways that range from the superficial to the deeply structural. In this article, I draw on original archival research into the composition process of Friel's genre-defining play Faith Healer (1979) to bring to light a model of influence that operates at the level of artistic practice. Specifically, I examine the extent to which Friel's officially unacknowledged encounter with a book of interviews with painter Francis Bacon influenced the play in terms of character, language, and form. I suggest that Bacon's creative process – incorporating his ideas on the role of the artist, the workings of chance, and the extent to which art does violence to fact – may have had a major influence on both the play's development and on Friel's development as an artist.

Worlds in a bottle

In this article, I call for an object-centered ethnography to illuminate the ontological multiplicity that marks the worlds of health and healing that people inhabit. Focusing on a sports-drink bottle filled with a remedy from a faith healer in rural South Africa, I explore the ‘partial connections’ that link the world of global health and the world of traditional healing through objects and bodies. Drawing on medical anthropology focused on global health and medical pluralism as well as scholarship from the ontological turn, I argue that global health programs are limited by their failure to recognize the ontological multiplicity their target populations inhabit.

Christus medicus – Christus patiens: Healing as exorcism in context

The aim of this article is to argue that healing stories in the Jesus tradition should be understood as exorcisms, even if the concept of demonisation does not occur in the narrative. In the theistic and mythological context of the 1st-century Graeco-Roman religious and political world, external forces responsible for social imbalances pertain to the demonisation of body and spirit. Medical cure was also embedded in the same biopolitical setting. The article describes aspects of this biopolitics and the role of ancient physicians. However, Jesus’ revolutionary acts were not deeds of a medical doctor, but ought to be understood as the healing activity of a faith healer who empowered traumatised people by creating safe space for them within a quasi-fictive kinship network. The article concludes with an application of the dialectic notion ‘Christus medicus – Christus patiens’ in the life of the present-day network of Jesus-followers.

Prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms and their association with multimorbidity and demographic factors: a community-based, cross-sectional survey in Karachi, Pakistan

ObjectiveThis study aimed to estimate the prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms and their association with multimorbidity and the demographic characteristics of adults aged 30 years and above in Karachi, Pakistan.DesignObservational cross-sectional study.Study setting and participantsThe study was carried out among a general population aged 30 years and above residing in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal town of Karachi, Pakistan. The study participants were recruited using the systematic random sampling approach based on the inclusion criteria. The data collected from 2867 participants were analysed.Main outcome measuresThe primary outcome of the study was the prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms, measured with the Aga Khan University Anxiety Depression Scale. The secondary outcome was the association of anxiety and depressive symptoms with multimorbidity as well as with the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, using binary logistic regression.ResultsOut of 2867 individuals, 27.4% reported having anxiety and depressive symptoms. The multivariate logistic regression model revealed that the presence of multimorbidity (adjusted OR (AOR)=1.33, 95% CI 1.11 to 1.58), female gender (AOR=2.40, 95% CI 2.01 to 2.87), illiteracy (AOR=1.51, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.07), more children (AOR=0.74, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.93) and visiting a faith healer (AOR=2.29, 95% CI 1.82 to 2.88) were the significant factors associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms.ConclusionThis study revealed a moderately high prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms among adults aged 30 years and above in Karachi, Pakistan. The key variables associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms were multimorbidity, female gender, lower level of education, more children and visiting faith healers.