[Religiosity and mental health of adolescents and young adults: a review].

Religiosity could play an important role in the mental balance of young people, a significant portion of whom are characterized by insecurity and uncertainty about the present and the future. This article is a review of the literature on the relationship between religiosity and the mental health of adolescents and young adults. Religiosity - which includes the term spirituality - in adolescents and young adults has been shown to act as a potential protective factor against psychopathology like depression, anxiety, stress and drug use but also as an enhancer of normal psychological characteristics (e.g., resilience, self-control, personality traits). Also, religiosity is positively associated with life satisfaction. Greek literature, though limited, has highlighted the positive effects of religiosity on mental health, similar to the international literature, both in the general and clinical population. Even if most studies have reported positive associations between religiosity and mental health, a minority of other studies report mixed or fully negative associations. The difference of findings in associations between religiosity and mental health could be due to assessment problems of religiosity. Many factors have been used to evaluate religiosity, but the three-factor model (organizational, non-organizational or private, and intrinsic or subjective religiosity) is the most comprehensive model for investigating religiosity. Parents play an important role in the development of religiosity in adolescents and young adults, as they influence their psycho- emotional development. This effect is related to the degree, type and harmony of the religiosity of the parents themselves but also the parent-child bond. There are still substantial gaps in research on the mediating effect of religiosity on the mental health of young people. An example is the protective combined role of religiosity and self-control against substance use. Self-control and religiosity could play an important role in the mental balance of young adults. Although for the most part it seems that religiosity improves mental health, future work in this area should consider the mediating factors in this relationship.

Are dexamethasone suppression test nonsuppression and thyroid dysfunction related to a family history of dementia in patients with major depression? An exploratory study.

OBJECTIVE: Recent data suggest that the low thyroid function syndrome in depression is nonspecific. They also suggest that depression may constitute a risk factor for the development of dementia, especially in atypical patients who have high rates of hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis disorders. This study aimed to search for correlations among Dexamethasone Suppression Test (DST) cortisol levels, thyroid indices, and family history of dementia in patients with depression. METHODS: A sample of 30 patients, aged 21 to 60 years and suffering from major depression according to DSM-IV criteria, took part in the study. Three had a family history of dementia in first-degree relatives. We measured their serum levels of free T3, free T4, thyroid-stimulating hormone, thyroid binding inhibitory immunoglobulines, thyroglobulin antibodies, and thyroid microsomal antibodies (TMAs). We applied the 1-mg DST to all patients. The statistical analysis included 1-way multivariate analysis of covariance using t tests as the post hoc tests. RESULTS: Significantly higher levels of TMAs were found in patients with a family history of dementia, compared with those who did not have this family history. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that a more pronounced autoimmune process may characterize depression patients with a family history of dementia.

Psychophysiology and psychoacoustics of music: Perception of complex sound in normal subjects and psychiatric patients.

Perception of complex sound is a process carried out in everyday life situations and contributes in the way one perceives reality. Attempting to explain sound perception and how it affects human beings is complicated. Physics of simple sound can be described as a function of frequency, amplitude and phase. Psychology of sound, also termed psychoacoustics, has its own distinct elements of pitch, intensity and tibre. An interconnection exists between physics and psychology of hearing.Music being a complex sound contributes to communication and conveys information with semantic and emotional elements. These elements indicate the involvement of the central nervous system through processes of integration and interpretation together with peripheral auditory processing.Effects of sound and music in human psychology and physiology are complicated. Psychological influences of listening to different types of music are based on the different characteristics of basic musical sounds. Attempting to explain music perception can be simpler if music is broken down to its basic auditory signals. Perception of auditory signals is analyzed by the science of psychoacoustics. Differences in complex sound perception have been found between normal subjects and psychiatric patients and between different types of psychopathologies.

Special characteristics affecting the neuropsychologic assessment of the elderly in Greece.

An important element in the diagnostic approach to psychogeriatric patients is the neuropsychologic assessment. Most instruments have been developed in the United States or the United Kingdom, but their appropriateness for culturally different populations is still an open question. Validation studies in Greece revealed certain difficulties both for the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Cambridge Cognitive Examination for the Elderly. These results were probably due to the functional illiteracy of elderly people in Greece, the coexistence of mood disorders, restricted access to news over past decades, and low levels of cooperation between the subject and the examiner The need for a more suitable diagnostic instrument for this kind of population led to the development of the Epidemiological Dementia Index. Data from developing countries support the possibility that research results from Europe and the United States are not directly applicable to the whole world; thus, the need for data from non-English speaking countries is evergrowing. Our understanding of psychogeriatric disorders in the developing world is like an iceberg: The larger portion is hidden because of the lack of relevant data.

Arguments against the cognitive dysmetria hypothesis of schizophrenia.

Recently, the 'cognitive dysmetria' theory for schizophrenia has been formulated. According to this theory, a primary neurocognitive dysfunction is the core of schizophrenia and underlies symptom formation. The suggested perceptual fragmentation of external stimuli and inability to connect such perceptions with internal schemata is suggested to lead to positive symptoms, while defensive self-restriction and the exhaustion of the mental apparatus lead to negative symptomatology. Objections to this theory include observations (i) that patients with dominant positive symptoms, e.g., delusions, hallucinations, manifest better neurocognitive function and (ii) that typically antipsychotics significantly reduce positive symptoms and thus improve both the clinical picture and the functioning (to the extent it is reduced with positive symptoms) of the patients, yet have little or no effect on negative, e.g., loss of volition, emotional blunting, and neurocognitive symptomatology, e.g., attentional and memory deficit. The literature suggests that neurocognitive symptoms group independently of other symptomatology. It is suggested that there is currently more evidence against than in favor of the 'cognitive dysmetria' theory.