[Correlation between women's psychopathological condition and marital satisfaction]

One of the contributing factors in marital satisfaction is psychological issues. The aim of the study was to evaluate the correlation between females mental health and marital satisfaction. Current comparative cross-sectional study was conducted on 245 female subjects with psychopathology attending to a psychiatric clinic in Tehran during two years of 2005-2006. They had a former interview and afterwards fullfilled two questionnaires of ENRICH [for marital satisfaction] and SCL-90-R [assessing mental health]. There was no significant correlation between ENRICH score and that obtained from SCL-90-R. However, factors of depression, anxiety, and obsession-compulsion was negatively correlated with marital satisfaction [P < 0.05]; whereas, phobia was not related to it [P > 0.05]. According to obtained results of correlation between mental health and marital satisfaction, it is recommended to consider marital distress of women with major psychiatric symptoms, especially amongst young couples and therefore, develop some scheduled combination treatment of pharmacotherapy and marital therapy strategies to enhance their marital satisfaction and improve the quality of life, particularly through out the management of anxiety, depression and OCD

Frequency of symptoms of depression, general anxiety, obsessive - compulsive and phobia in interictal phase in patients with Epilepsy

The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of symptoms of depressions, general anxiety, obsessive compulsive and phobia in interictal phase among patients suffering from epilepsy. This cross sectional observational study was performed on 137 outpatients referred to neurology clinic of Imam Hossein hospital in 2004. all patients were in the interictal phase. Demographic and epilepsy variables and a questionnaire including items asking about depression, general anxiety, obsessive compulsive and phobia of SCL-90-R [symptoms chick list-90-revised] was completed. Relative frequency of depression, general anxiety, obsessive compulsive, and phobia was 55.4%, 44.9% ,55.8% and 23.2%, respectively. Phobia symptoms were associated with lower educational level [p=0.029], unemployment [p=0.013] and older age [-p=0.013]. The symptoms of obsessive compulsive [p=0.041] and general anxiety [p=0.044] were associated with older age. Different psychiatric symptoms were not correlated with sex, amount of drug use, marital status and the duration of the disease or type of epilepsy. Our findings highlighted that depression and obsessive compulsive symptoms in the first grade and general anxiety and phobia in the second grade are among the causes of morbidity among epileptic patients. Psychiatric symptoms are suspected to be higher in older, unemployed, and less educated epileptic patients. A close cooperation between neurologists and psychiatrists is necessary in the approach to the patients with epilepsies

Mental health status of employees in substations of electromagnetic fields at extremely low frequency in Tehran

With regard to the relationship between exposure to electromagnetic fields and development of potential biological system impairments and increasing number of these fields, the current research was conducted in 2004 on 101 employees of high voltage centers to determine the role of working in these fields on mental health. One hundred and one employees were exposed to electromagnetic field at 50 Hz found from 230 kV current. We used SCL-90-R test and compared the subjects with the control group. Data analysis showed that the mean scores of the case group in Global Severity Index and Positive Symptom Total with significant difference were higher than that of the control group [P<0.022 and P<0.049]. Positive Symptom Distress Index showed no significant difference between the two groups. Cases had also higher scores in all subscales in comparison with the control group. It was statistically significant for subscales of somatization, depression, anxiety, hostility and phobia. For psychoticism with P>0.05 it tended not to be significant. No correlation was found between age, marital status and split-shift working with GSI scores. Employment in electromagnetic fields at extremely low frequency can lead to the development of mental disorders. However, the results need confirmation by other controlled trials