[Attitude, knowledge, and satisfaction of health personnel and general population about the program of integration of mental health in PHC in Iran: a systematic review]

To systematically review studies on attitude, knowledge, and satisfaction of health personnel and general population about the program of integration of mental health in PHC in the recent 20 years. International and local databases were electronically searched. Hand searching, reviewing reference lists and personal communications were also done. 11 studies on attitude and knowledge and one study on satisfaction were selected after reviewing full texts of the documents. Most studies were on Behvarzes and general population and few studies assessed other groups. Knowledge of the studied groups were higher than average in most studies. The only satisfaction study suggested a medium, high, and low satisfaction of general population from interpersonal and care delivery, time and cost benefit, and treatment outcomes, respectively. Knowledge and attitude of the personnel and general population seems to be average or higher in most studies. This could be partly due to implementation of the integration program. However, more empirical data is needed to evaluate the issues more specifically

[Analysis of Iran's mental health research over 3 decades: a scientometric study]

Objective: To describe the characteristics of Iran’s mental health research articles that are published over a 30-year period

Method: The articles include those concerned with psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience that were published in the national as well as international scientific journals. These articles were drawn from a national database of published research in psychiatry, psychology as well as neuroscience [IranPsych]. For this study, articles were limited to those published in a 30-year period of 1973-2002 [1352-1381 in Persian calendar]

Results: Of a total of 3031 articles published in the 30-year period, 19.8% were published in the international journals. The publication trends showed a marked increase in number over item, especially in the last 5 years. Among research areas, psychology, clinical sciences, and the neurosciences constituted the largest proportions [52.8%, 31.6%, and 13.5%, respectively]. The trend of research areas revealed an upward trajectory for the proportion of neuroscience research and a decline in the proportion of mental health service research. The topic of 38.6% of all articles was in the category of mental disorders, with pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy researches constituting 14.5% and 5.7% of the articles, respectively. Among mental disorders, the largest proportions of the published research were about mood disorders, substance use related disorders, and anxiety disorders. The most commonly used research method was cross-sectional, with experimental designs comprising 15.9% and prospective research accounting for 1%. The preferred places for data collection included hospitals, schools and universities. In more than 90% of the articles there were no references to the funding sources and only 2.1% of the articles were carried out with international collaboration of the authors

Conclusion: The rising trend of mental health research publications shows the significant contribution of nation’s mental health researchers. The results of this study could provide an empirical basis for policy making and strategic planning in mental health research