Some psychiatric and social aspects of mental retardation; the maladaptive responses of parents to mentally handicapped children in Egypt

This study has been carried out on 20 families of mentally handicapped children, the aim of this paper was to outline the tragic impact on any family of a mentally handicapped child and their feelings which permit all current and future relationships between family members and others as they affect the efforts of the family to cope with their child's handicap. As in agreement with similar western studies the effect on parents having a mentally retarded child could be summed up as first grief and second burden of care. The stages of grief were discussed in details as well as the details of burden of care with reference to the difference between Egyptians and western cultures. The conclusion was that there is a great need to decrease the burden of care on the parents and enabling children to live in the communities by providing appropriate schooling, relief care informed advice on practical problem and so on

Koro, is it a culture bound syndrome?

Koro syndrome has been recognized by many as culture bound [Yap, 1965; and Rin, 1965]. The syndrome has been described as early as 1834 by Pao, a Chinese author. More recently, many reports in the literature casted doubt about the geographical distribution of the syndrome and its culture bound nature. The author reviewed the literature and discuss the cases diagnosed in subjects of non-Chinese origin including a case who is pure Saudi citizen with no connections with Southeast Asia whatsoever. All cases described in the non-Chinese subjects shaved an incomplete picture of the syndrome, the one noticeable difference was the abscence of the fear of death which usually accompany the main presenting symptom of shrinking penis

Psychological aspects of infertility in women

Infertility is not a merely physical-medical [gynecological] problem but rather a problem of a more holistic nature. The problem of infertility has its reflection on the psychological well being of the infertile women as compared to fertile women except the grand multiparous. No attempt was given to study the cause of infertility and the social of economic background of the infertile family or personality structure of the women under study. We suggest detailed analysis of these factors in future studies in order to find out and study the different factors contributing, to the psychological reaction of the women to their problem of infertility

New inventory for measurement of parental rearing patterns: an Arabic form of the EMBU

Despite the importance of parental rearing patterns in psychiatric research, there are almost no acceptable standardised inventories available. An Arabic language version of the Swedish EMBU Inventory is presented, which has subscales measuring the degree to which each parent was abusive, depriving, punitive, shaming, rejecting, overprotective, over involved, tolerant, affectionate, performance-oriented, guilt-engendering, stimulating, favoured siblings, and favoured the subject. Results indicate high and comparable reliability and item-scale correlations in the Arabic version, and a similar factor structure. It .would appear that the EMBU has both cross-cultural reliability and stable structure in the Arabic translation

Some socio-cultural determinants of woman's psychological reaction to the problem of infertility

Do the socio-cultural factors such as level of education residency in rural or urban destricts, financial satisfaction, socio-economic standards and religious standards, play any role in the determination of the women's psychological reaction to infertility. The authors have shown that illitracy was significantly associated with high levels of anxiety, depression, introversion and maladjustment in infertile and grand-multiparious females. No difference was shown between rural and urban residence. Income/subjective unsatisfaction was associated also with high level of psychological disturbances in infertile and grand-multiparious females. The low religious standard and weak religiousty were associated with high psychological disturbances in the infertile and grand-multiparious women too

comparative study of the therapeutic effect of imipramine versus acupuncture in smoking cessation

Nicotine dependence is one form of drug dependencies and the cessation of smoking is always accompanied by withdrawal symptoms. It needs a form of psychiatric along with pharmacotherapeutic management. This study aims at comparing the efficacy of antidepressant [imipramine] and acupuncture as two therapeutic methods in the management of smoking abstinance and nicotine dependence. The study has shown that antidepressant [imipramine] was superior to acupuncture. The authors tried to explain the mechanism of action of both methods, the relationship between the two methods and withdrawal symptoms of nicotine dependency and the symptoms of depression