Theory of mind in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Comparison with healthy controls.

AIM: Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to represent one's own or another's mental states and has been found to be impaired in many psychiatric disorders. Our objective was to compare ToM abilities of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with healthy controls and to investigate the relation between some illness features, other cognitive functions and ToM abilities of patients. METHOD: Thirty OCD patients and age, sex and education matched 30 healthy controls were compared according to their performances on ToM tasks (including first and second order false belief, hinting task and double-bluff task), verbal memory processes test, Weschler memory test (WMT) (logical memory, visual reproduction and digit span sub-tests), stroop test. RESULTS: Patients' performances were worse than healthy controls on all of the ToM tasks, but the results were significant for only for double-bluff task (t=-3.992, df=36.157, p<0.01). Performance on double-bluff task was significantly and positively correlated with visual reproduction-immediate recall (r=-0.411, p<0.05) and visual reproduction-delayed recall (r=0.478, p<0.05), hinting task was significantly and positively correlated with verbal memory (r=0.481, p<0.05). CONCLUSION: These results show "basic" ToM abilities of OCD patients are generally preserved, but they show significant reduction in their "advanced" ToM abilities, which seem to be related to their reduced memory capacities. The possible reasons for the relation between memory and ToM impairments, as well as the clinical significance of ToM deficits in OCD are discussed.

Depression, anxiety levels and general psychological profile in Behçet's disease.

BACKGROUND: Behçet's disease (BD) is a multisystem disease with unknown etiology. Until today, the role of emotional stress and the real incidence of psychiatric symptoms in this disease have not been clarified yet. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the general psychological profile of the patients diagnosed as having BD as well as their depression and anxiety levels in order to investigate the psychiatric aspects of this disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty-three patients with BD and 17 patients with chronic plaque-type psoriasis who made up the control group were examined by the Beck Depression (BDI), Beck Anxiety (BAI) and Brief Symptom Inventories (BSI). RESULTS: The mean BDI score of the BD group was 11.69 +/- 6.93, and the corresponding value was 9.11 +/- 7.34 for the psoriasis group. The mean BAI score of the BD group was 21.39 + 13.68 and this level was 12.41 +/- 10.70 for psoriasis patients. The mean BSI score of the BD group was 61.30 +/- 43.66 and it was 30.41 +/- 28.77 for the control group. The mean BDI, BAI and BSI scores of the patients diagnosed as having BD were significantly higher than those of the control group (F = 0.234, F = 0.508, F = 0.549 and p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: BDI, BAI and BSI scales are useful to evaluate the psychiatric aspects of BD. The results of our study revealed that the collaboration of a dermatologist and psychiatrist is essential for the follow-up of patients with BD.

Stress and skin diseases in musicians: evaluation of the beck depression scale, general psychologic profile (the brief symptom inventory [BSI]), beck anxiety scale and stressful life events in musicians.

We had previously investigated skin problems of musicians (N = 117) working in a professional orchestra. The results of this survey suggest a significant incidence of occupational and stress-related skin problems in musicians such as hyperhydrosis, lichen planus, psoriasis, seborrheic dermatitis and urticaria. It was thought that emotional factors exacerbate their problems [6]. This article discusses the importance of psychiatric consultations in dermatologic problems.