ABSTRACT
Harlequin Ichthyosis (HI) is a dreadful skin disorder with steady rise of cases with prolonged survival. Harlequin fetus follows an autosomal recessive pattern with the incidence of 1in 300,000 live births. In the succeeding case report, a male child was born with keratinized and kaleidoscopic diamond pattern of skin suggestive of HI. He was born at 36th week of gestation from consanguineous marriage. The newborn remained under extensive intensive care in a tertiary care unit where he breathed his last on 11th day after birth. Prenatal diagnosis and genetic counseling is of vital importance due to the association of ABCA12 mutation with HI.
ABSTRACT
This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. INTRODUCTION: Depression is a mood disorder characterized by loss of interest in daily activity, feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, decreased appetite, anger and irritability. The risk factors which leads to depression include academic demands, daily habits, sleeping hours, sedentary lifestyle, inability to cope, helplessness, increased psychological pressure, mental tension and increased work load etc. The objective of current study is to find out the prevalence of depression among students of different medical colleges of Karachi and its association with life style, habits and coping mechanisms. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 6 months i.e. April 2018 to September 2018, using a self-designed, self-explanatory questionnaire which also included Public Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for identification of depression. The coefficient of reliability including Cronbach alpha was 0.839 for the questionnaire. The data was analyzed by using mean with standard deviation and frequency with percentages while association was calculated by using Chi-square test. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 21.43 ±1.803. About 2/3 of the participants were female with marital status of 3/4th of participants being single. 92% of the medical students were found to be depressed while 26% of them have suicidal thoughts. Symptoms of depression were compared with depression score, which showed strong positive correlation. Depression scores were also compared with lifestyle habits of participants, including sleeping hours, exercise, recent trauma and multiple coping mechanisms, presented significant association with depression scores (p-value ≤ 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that depression is highly prevalent amongst medical student populations while the lifestyle habits, sleeping hours, physical activities, recent trauma and coping mechanism showed significant positive association with depression.
