Special attention should be paid to patients with these factors while designing programmes to improve overall compliance in patients with schizophrenia.

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The aims of this study were to compare anxiety and depressive symptoms between a sample of Nigerian women and their husbands on treatment for infertility, and to identify factors, which are associated with emotional burden in their families. In total, 82 women and their spouses completed the two subscales of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) at the gynaecology clinics of a Nigerian teaching hospital. The women had a significantly higher mean anxiety score (p<0.001) and higher mean depression score (p <0,001) than their husbands. On both anxiety and depression subscales of the HADS, the scores of the women were positively correlated with their husbands' scores (p<00.1). Emotional burden in the family was significantly associated with low religious inclination of husband and wife; strained relationship of couple; extended family pressure on husband; husbands' negative attitude towards child adoption; and lower age group of wife. Women with infertility in this subregion experience higher emotional burden than their husbands. Psychological couple counselling is required to ameliorate the emotional burden of infertility imposed by these factors.

Objective:This study attempted to explore the feasibility of use of the 18-item Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R) as a subjective suicide risk assessment tool in a cross-sectional sample of Nigerian patients with schizophrenia.Materials and Methods:Two hundred and thirty-two outpatients with schizophrenia were recruited from the mental health clinic of a university teaching hospital in Southwestern Nigeria. They completed the OCI-R in addition to the Social and Occupational Functioning Assessment Scale, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, and a sociodemographic and illness-related questionnaire. The patients were objectively interviewed with the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview suicidality module items to assess their suicide risk.Results:The 18-item OCI-R demonstrated satisfactory sensitivity (0.900) and specificity (0.662) at a total cutoff score of 10 in relation to the identification of Nigerian patients with schizophrenia with significant suicide risk. At this cutoff score, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.817 (95% confidence interval: 0.735–0.898), and positive predictive value (0.726) and negative predictive value (0.869) were also satisfactory. The OCI-R also demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency and construct validity.Conclusion:The OCI-R has demonstrated to be useful as a subjective suicide risk assessment tool among Nigerian schizophrenia patients.

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Elemental concentrations of blood and hair of 40 mentally-ill patients and 40 controls (healthy subjects) were determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrophotometer (ICP-OES) in order to find out the metal burden of the patients with their level of significance and possible relationship of such elements with mental illness. Generally, higher concentrations of trace elements were obtained in the hair than in the blood. A concentration range of 90-400 µg/g was obtained for Mg, K and Fe in hair of patients and controls, 80-7400 µg/g was obtained in their blood; other elements range 0.001-30 µg/g in both blood and hair of patients and controls. Comparative study of statistical significance of median values between different groups was determined by applying a non parametric test (Mann-Whitney) showed that concentrations of Ba, Be, Cr, Li, Mg, Fe and K were significantly higher in patients' blood, while Al,