Psychiatric comorbidity in Greek patients with generalized anxiety disorder.

From a total sample of 1,448 psychiatric outpatients, 81 (5.6%) received a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) according to DSM-III-R criteria. Fifty-three (65%) of them had another Axis I diagnosis, while this percentage increased to 78% (63/81) when lifetime psychiatric diagnoses were recorded. The most frequent comorbid diagnoses were panic disorder, dysthymia, major depression and social phobia. Forty-three (53%) of the GAD patients met the criteria for personality disorder. They manifested obsessive-compulsive, avoidant personality and personalities of cluster C in general significantly more frequently than the rest of the total sample. The presence of a personality disorder was related to a significantly higher score on almost all the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory clinical and research scales, to a worse level of functioning and to an earlier age of onset of GAD. The results of the present study (1) support previous findings of high rates of comorbidity of clinical syndromes in GAD, (2) indicate that GAD co-occurs frequently with cluster C personality disorders, mainly avoidant and obsessive-compulsive, and (3) that the presence of a concomitant personality disorder is related to severer psychopathology and to a worse level of functioning.

Medical students' attitudes toward psychiatry in Greece : an eight-year comparison.

This study is a comparative investigation of the attitudes toward psychiatry of two medical student groups who did their undergraduate training in psychiatry in 1985 and 1993. Attitude assessments were carried out by using the Libertarian Mental Health Ideology Scale (LMHIS). The students completed the questionnaire twice, at the beginning and at the end of their clerkship. The LMHIS was also completed by the teaching staff. Both medical student groups showed a significant change in their attitudes toward psychiatry after the end of the training. The change consisted of a shift to a more medical orientation. However, the 1993 group manifested a significantly higher medical orientation both before and after their undergraduate training in psychiatry compared with the 1985 group. Furthermore, the former group's opinions at the end of their education were similar to those of their teaching staff, whereas the 1985 students continued to have a lower medical orientation compared with the teaching staff. These findings indicate that 1) psychiatric education during medical school may significantly mold students' attitudes toward psychiatry and 2) if these medical student groups represent the larger Greek society, then significant changes may be occurring in the Greek society about attitudes toward psychiatry.

Arterial segmentation of the human spleen by post-mortem angiograms and corrosion-casts.

In a series of seventy adult human spleens, obtained from embalmed dissecting-room cadavers and post-mortem bodies, the extrasplenic division and intrasplenic architecture of the terminal branches of the splenic artery and of its polar arteries were studied via extrasplenic dissection, angiograms and injection-corrosion casts. The results showed that the splenic artery is divided into two (85.7%), or three (14.3%) primary branches, each of which is subdivided, mostly, into two to four secondary branches. Moreover, a superior polar artery (60.0%) and inferior polar arteries (80.0%) are given from the splenic trunk or from one of its primary branches. The human spleen is divided accordingly into two or three main arterial segments, separated by a definite avascular plane. Also, a rather constant avascular plane separated the polar segments from the remaining of the organ. Each main segment is also subdivided, usually into two to four less constant secondary segments, the architecture of which and the avascular planes between them are very variable. The findings of this study and other relative studies consist the anatomical basis for highly conservative surgical management, as an alternative to splenectomy, in cases of splenic rupture.

The psilocybin-induced "state of drunkenness" in normal volunteers and schizophrenics.

The effects of the psilocybin, a psychomimetic substance, on mental junctioning were investigated in normal volunteers as well as in schizophrenics. The disturbances induced constitute a psychoneurotoxic syndrome--"a state of drunkenness"--of about four hours duration which develops in three distinct phases. The basic mental symptoms of this syndrome consist of disturbances of the apperception, sensory perception and emotion. A moderate impairment of egofunctioning or reality appraisal and an inability to integrate different mental processes are observed. The psychomotor behavior is mainly harmonized to the prevailing emotional state and to the experiences caused by perceptual alterations, in a lesser degree. These changes, according to our observations, are more severe and more "psychotic-like" in schizophrenics rather than in normals. Psychopathological analysis of these changes proves that the whole syndrome cannot be considered as related to the spontaneously triggered functional psychoses or to the organic ones and, therefore, the term "model-psychosis" according to our opinion, is unsatisfactory.