“Psychopharmacoteratophobia is the fear or avoidance of prescribing psychotropic medicine to a pregnant woman on a given indication in anticipation of fetal malformation.” It is rooted in the tragedy associated with thalidomide use and is increasing due to the inability to predict accurately, strict legal provision of consumer protection, ethical and legal issues involved, and pitfalls in the available evidence of teratogenicity. In the Indian setting, the physicians face more challenges as the majority of the patients may ask them to decide, what is the best for their health. Most guidelines emphasize more on what not to do than what to do, and the locus of decision is left to the doctor and the patient. In this review, we have focused on relevant issues related to psychopharmacoteraophobia that may be helpful to understand this phenomenon and help to address the deprivation of a mentally ill woman from the required treatment.
We are reporting a case of zolpidem induced multimodal hallucinations in a 22 year old female without any history of psychiatric disorders. Zolpidem, by acting on gamma-amino butyric acid type A receptor has a potential to cause a paradoxical reaction and there also exists a possibility of an induced delirium with its use. This case reports evaluates its potential to cause multimodal hallucinations. Zolpidem needs to be prescribed judiciously with the caution of potential side effects particularly in females.
Yoga philosophy includes the theory of Tri-guna (three mental traits): sattva (signifies a tendency to ‘goodness’), rajas (tendency towards ‘activity’), and tamas (tendency towards “inertia”). This cross-sectional study aimed to understand the differences in the expression of gunas in patients suffering from major psychiatric disorders (n = 113, 40 females) and age-gender-education-matched healthy controls (HCs; n = 113, 40 females). Patients were diagnosed by a psychiatrist using DSM 5 criteria and suffered from the following disorders: depression (n = 30), schizophrenia (SCZ; n = 28), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD; n = 23), anxiety (n = 16), and bipolar affective disorder (BPAD; n = 16). Tri-gunas were assessed using a validated tool (Vedic Personality Inventory) and symptoms were assessed using standard scales as per the diagnosis. Multi-variate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to assess the differences in guna scores between HCs and patients, and between patients with different diagnoses. A two-tailed Pearson correlation was performed between the gunas and psychometric scales. Results revealed that HCs had significantly higher sattva traits as compared to patients (except those with OCD). Each psychiatric diagnosis also showed a specific guna configuration: (1) Anxiety disorders and OCD: High sattva-rajas, low tamas; (2) Depression: High sattva-tamas, low rajas; (3) Psychotic disorders (SCZ/BPAD): High tamo-rajas, low sattva. Significant positive correlations were observed between rajas traits and anxiety/OC/positive psychotic symptoms, negative psychotic symptoms and tamas traits, and sattva traits and OC symptoms. This finding has clinical implications, both to develop ways of predicting outcomes of psychiatric disorders, as well as to develop psycho-therapeutic and lifestyle interventions targeting the gunas.
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