Auditory Steady-State Evoked Potentials in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Introduction of a Potential Biomarker.

Objective: The lack of steady-state evoked potential (SSEP) studies on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has led to undiscovered useful information about the pathophysiology of the disorder. Thus, we explored SSEP patterns in PTSD patients during a stop-signal task to disclose possible impairments in these informative brain potentials. Method : 25 adult patients with PTSD and 25 healthy adults participated in this research. Subjects were assessed with electroencephalography while the tone signal stimuli at 40 Hz were used to evoke SSEPs and subjects performed a stop-signal task. The amplitude and phase of SSEPs were then computed in different brain regions. The subjects were also evaluated using the Mississippi PTSD questionnaire. Appropriate statistical methods such as repeated measure ANOVA were used to compare the two groups, and the correlation between SSEPs and clinical symptoms was assessed using Pearson correlation analysis. Results: Patients showed considerably poorer performance in the cognitive task (P < 0.01), accompanied by raised SSEP phase and amplitude in the anterior and midline regions compared to healthy controls (P < 0.05). The Mississippi total score was positively correlated with the SSEP amplitude in the midline region (r = 0.62, P < 0.05). Furthermore, based on ROC analysis, the SSEP amplitude in the midline region provided an excellent AUC value (AUC = 0.850) for distinguishing patients with PTSD from normal subjects. Conclusion: Current findings suggest that abnormalities in the anterior and midline cortical neural networks are involved in the pathophysiology of PTSD. Importantly, midline abnormalities may provide a clinically-relevant measure for researchers wishing to assess the use of biomarkers for early diagnosis of PTSD as well as to evaluate new therapeutic and management approaches in the treatment of PTSD.

A Social-Cognitive Educational Protocol for Parents with Adolescents at Risk of Substance Use: Impact on Adolescents' Life Skill.

Objective: The aim of this study was to instruct social cognitive protocol based on life skills and parenting skills to parents with teenagers at substance use risk and also to investigate its effectiveness among teenagers. Method : The present study is a quasi-experimental study with a pretest, posttest, and follow-up approach with a group in 3 stages of measurement. The statistical population included 70 adolescents at risk of substance abuse who were selected using the available sampling method. The survey consisted of 40 questions about adolescents' life skills in four subscales of self-control skills, assertiveness and saying no skills, decision-making skills, and problem-solving skills, and the reliability of the entire questionnaire was estimated to be 0.98 using the Cronbach's alpha method. In this study, adolescents were first given a test, and after two weeks, their parents learned the social cognitive protocol over a 12-week period and were asked to impart these skills to their adolescents at home. After that, the adolescents gave the same test after the intervention (posttest). Two months after the posttest, the follow-up test was performed without any training. Results: Comparison of the mean of the three stages of measurement showed that the effect of the overall life skills score, according to the value of Wilkes Lambda multivariate test (0.666) with degrees of freedom two and 40, can be rejected as a null hypothesis (P <0.01). In addition, in the subscales of decision-making skills (0.781), problem-solving (0.688), and self-control (0.816), the mean score of the participants in the three measurements was simultaneously different; and in the follow-up stage, the scores were significantly different than the pretest. However, in terms of assertiveness and the skill of saying no, the scores did not differ simultaneously in the three measurements (0.986). Conclusion: These scores show that teaching social cognitive protocol to parents of adolescents who are at risk of substance abuse is effective.

Psychometric Properties of Mobile Phone Abuse (MPA): Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis in Student Mobile Users.

Objective: Smartphone is an important technology device in our lifestyle. It has an important part of our daily lives, but it also has a negative effect, such as cell phone dependency. This research aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of mobile phone abuse (MPA) in the Iranian population. Method: In this study, data were chosen from 1100 participants who were studying in Tehran universities. The principal version of the scale was translated into Persian using the back translation method. All attendees completed Demographic Questionnaire, MPA Questionnaire, and Mobile Phone Problematic Use Scale (MPPUS). Eventually, a clinical interview (based on the fifth version of DSM) was done for all the participants. For data analysis, internal and external consistency, factor analysis, construct validity and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used. Statistically, less than 0.05 were considered to be significant. Results: According to expert judgments, content validity index was satisfactory. Furthermore, the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed with Cronbach's α of 0.90 and test-retest reliability of 0.56 after 3 weeks. The best cutoff point for this questionnaire (MPA) was 46. Also, 4 factors were extracted by principal components method and varimax rotation: "excessive use of cell phone," "addictive use of social networks," "mood modification," and "preoccupation" for both male and female students. Conclusion: MPA could be used in studies on the evaluation of mobile phone addiction. This can be a stepping stone towards the identification of problems and improvement of students' mobile phone abuse.

The Effect of Brief Crisis Intervention Package on Improving Quality of Life and Mental Health in Patients with COVID-19.

Objective: COVID 19 is having a devastating effect on mankind's life. Individuals with COVID-19 will experience high levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and low quality of life. The goals the of present study were to investigate the effect of brief crisis intervention package on stress, depression, anxiety, and quality of life in patient with COVID-19. Method : In this randomized controlled clinical trial, 30 patients were randomly selected and divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental group was examined in four 60-minute sessions for one month. During this period, the control group received only routine treatment and therapy. Before and after the intervention, DASS21, the Symptom Checklist (SCL-25), and WHO-QOL were used to measure and record patient mental health and quality of life. Finally, data were analyzed using SPSS 24 software. Results: The average mental health score was assessed with WHO-QOL, DASS21, and SCL-25 before intervention and was not statistically significant (P = > 0.05), and the mean score of stress, anxiety, depression, WHO-QOL, SCL-25 after intervention was statistically significant (P < 0.001). Therefore, results showed the brief crisis intervention package was effective in improving the quality of life (P < 0.05) and mental illnesses (P < 0.05) in patients with COVID-19. Conclusion: The brief crisis intervention package can reduce the negative effect of patients with COVID-19. Therefore, this intervention can be used as a beneficial treatment to improve mental disorder symptoms and to improve the condition of people who suffer from COVID-19.