No abstract

Our findings suggest that outcome measures were correlated with subsyndromal disorder, the number of previous depressive episodes and the duration of hospitalisation.

The aim of this study was to reexamine and compare the characteristics of the deficit and nondeficit schizophrenic patients. This cross-sectional study consisted of 62 in- and out-patients, 18-65 years of age, diagnosed with schizophrenia according to DSM-IV. The sociodemographic variables, premorbid adjustment, clinical course and general functioning level in the past five years were evaluated by utilizing the appropriate sections of Comprehensive Assessment of Symptoms and History (CASH). In addition, GAF, the Schedule for the Deficit Syndrome (SDS), Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Montgomery Asberg Depression Scale (MADRS), the Neurological Evaluation Scale (NES) and the Simpson Angus Extrapyramidal Side Effects (EPS) Rating Scale, Trail A and B, Verbal Fluency, Stroop, Block Design and Finger Tapper tests were administered. Using the SDS, 19 patients (30.6 %) were categorized as deficit; 43 (69.4 %) were categorized as nondeficit. The deficit patients were worse on the Functioning During Past Five Years score of CASH. The PANSS and MADRS mean scores were not significantly different between the two groups, except a higher level of negative symptoms observed in the deficit group. NES scores were also significantly higher in the deficit group. However, sociodemographic and other clinical variables, neurocognitive measures and EPS symptoms did not show any significant difference between the two groups. Our findings suggest that the deficit schizophrenia is a distinct subgroup comprised of patients who have more negative symptoms, neurological impairment and poor functioning which may have a common underlying pathology.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of a group of Turkish vaginismus patients who benefited from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and to study which factors this treatment model changes. Twenty-eight couples who applied to Psychiatry Clinic of Hacettepe University Hospital, Ankara, for treatment of vaginismus within the 6-month period participated in the study. Fourteen subjects quit the therapy after the initial assessment sessions. Other couples successfully completed the treatment. We assessed all the couples that completed the CBT at three times: during the initial session, at the end of the treatment, and during the follow-up session (4 weeks after the end of the treatment). In terms of anxiety levels, and quality of marital and sexual relationships, the characteristics of the couples that quit the therapy could not be identified. But we found that all of the participants were treated effectively by CBT. At the end of the therapy, anxiety levels of the women decreased. There also were improvements on parameters related to marital harmony and overall sexual functioning of the women. We discuss the findings of our study within a cultural perspective.

The following study was conducted to adapt the Auditory Consonant Trigram Test (ACT) to Turkish, acquire a new and larger set of normative data, and finally investigate the reliability and validity of the adapted version. The data were collected from a sample of 236 healthy individuals. To test the validity of the Turkish version of ACT, the normative results of ACT were first compared with those obtained from the Digit Span Test (DST) backwards section. Secondly, the ACT performance of 53 schizophrenic patients was compared with that of a matched group selected from the normative sample. Age and education variables influenced performance, whereas gender did not in the normal sample. The ACT and DST backwards scores were positively correlated. As expected, the ACT performance was worse in schizophrenic patients compared to controls. The internal consistency of the adapted version of ACT was found to be at a reliable level (alpha=0.8535). The Turkish version of ACT can be considered to be a reliable and valid measure of working memory.