Objectives. Suicide is a major public health concern. Sensible media reporting of suicide is one of the important prevention strategies. There has been no report assessing the quality of media reporting of suicide in Nepal. We aimed to assess the quality of newspaper reporting of suicide in Nepal against the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting guidelines. Methods. We undertook a content analysis study of articles from the online archives on reporting of suicide deaths in six English language (daily or weekly) newspapers published in Nepal over the two-year duration from a period between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020. Also, we compared them with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Results. A total of 165 English newspaper articles reporting on suicide were analyzed. 163 (98.8%) of news were published in the main section of the newspaper, and the mean length was 17.6 sentences. The name and age of the person who died of suicide were mentioned in about 69.1% ( n = 114 ) and 53.3% ( n = 88 ) articles, respectively. The most common method of suicide reported in the news articles was hanging (45.5%, n = 75 ), followed by poisoning (11.5%, n = 19 ). About 97.6% ( n = 161 ) of news articles violated the recommendation provided in the WHO guidelines. Conclusions. The adherence to the WHO guidelines for media reporting of suicide in Nepal was found to be poor, with a large majority of news reports having at least one potentially harmful media characteristic. Only a small minority of news reports included potentially helpful information to prevent suicide.

Introduction: Bipolar affective disorder a chronic, and highly disabling psychiatric disorder is one of the leading causes of disability and is estimated to affect more than 1% of the global population irrespective of origin, ethnicity, nationality or socioeconomic status. The effectiveness of lithium in mania and psychotic excitement was proven first proven in 1960 and since then lithium is considered to be a gold standard treatment for bipolar disorder. Material and Method: A total of one hundred thirty five patients with bipolar disorder were enrolled in a prospective study to analyze the serum lithium levels on maintenance dose of lithium. After ethical clearance data was collected from patients attending BG Hospital and Research Centre from July 2013 to July 2019. The patients who were on maintenance treatment with different doses of lithium only were included. These patients were tested for serum lithium concentration as per lithium monitoring guidelines. Serum Lithium, serum electrolytes, height and weight of the patients were recorded. The psychiatric diagnosis was made according to the ICD-10 criteria. Data were computed and analyzed by using SPSS version 21. Parametric and non-parametric statistical technique was applied wherever appropriate. Results: The minimum efficacious serum lithium level in the long-term treatment of bipolar disorder was found at 0.16 mmol/l and maximum serum levels was 1.51 mmol/l. The mean serum lithium level was 0.596 mmol/l with standard deviation of 0.237 mmol/l. Conclusion: There is substantial variation in between the serum lithium levels of patients in remission on long term treatment. The uncertainty about the most efficacious serum lithium level for the long-term treatment of bipolar disorder leads to the suggestion of the treatment of individual patients to be based on clinical response rather than on serum lithium levels.

Background: Dermatological manifestations in children contribute to significant morbidity and psychological distress. Children with dermatological problems constitute a major bulk of the patients presenting to the Outpatient department. The study was conducted with an objective to find out the pattern of skin disease among the various pediatric age group. Method: We analyzed epidemiological data of 612 patients, aged 1 months to 15 years, who were referred to the Dermatology outpatient from the Pediatric outpatient between 2nd Baisakh 2075 to 31 Chaitra 2076. Demographic data and the frequency of the various diagnoses in various age groups were studied. Result: The most common category of diagnosis was infection in 35.78%, followed by allergic reaction in 33.50% and infestations in 14.22%, other dermatosis in 13.07%, while multiple diagnosis was found in 3.43%. Among all diagnostic groups, Scabies was the most common (14.22%) followed by Urticaria (11.92%). Conclusion: Comparison of the common dermatosis with the age group showed a strongly significant effect on occurrence of common dermatosis. Their incidence can be brought down by improving nutrition and personal hygiene of children. Health and wellness of school going children reflects the health status of a community. Our study provides a preliminary baseline data for future epidemiological and clinical research.

Background: Opioid use is a serious global problem and the problem is increasing over years. Buprenorphine has been approved as a substitution therapy in Nepal, but there are few long-term studies of its effectiveness. Aim: This study aimed to assess the 1-year efficacy of buprenorphine and reasons for dropout. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted at Western Regional Hospital, Pokhara from 29th August 2016 to 31st August 2017. The Buprenorphine Maintenance Treatment Program (BMT) was started on 29th August 2016 and all the clients enrolled in the program within 1 year of starting BMT were included in the study. Results: 75% of the enrolled clients dropped out in 1-year period. Conclusion: Adherence to Buprenorphine was better in flexible dose adjustment group. Combination of buprenorphine and psychosocial treatment would have been related with better outcome.

Introduction: Consultation Liaison Psychiatry is the fusion of Psychiatry and general medicine. The presence of mental disorders in physically ill people is often associated with poor medication compliance, slower or incomplete recovery, poor participation in the rehabilitation program, increased mortality and the high psychiatric comorbidity to other medical disorders in hospitalized patients significantly increases their length of hospital stay. Therefore, mental health professionals have important role to provide holistic care to people with various physical illnesses. Material and Method: This is a hospital- based, cross- sectional, descriptive study conducted for the period of six months, from 1st Baisakh, 2076 (14th April, 2019) to 30th Asoj, 2076 (17th October, 2019) at the department of Psychiatry at Gandaki Medical College, Pokhara, Nepal. This study was conducted to diagnose the various psychiatric disorders among the in-patients suffering from other physical illness, which were referred from other medical specialties. The psychiatric evaluation and the diagnosis were made by the consultant psychiatrists. Results: The total number of cases enrolled were163, out of which male were 96 (58.8%) and female were 67 (41.2%) in numbers. The age of the patients ranged from 6 years to 90 years with the mean age of 41.17 ± 18.57 years. Majority of the in- patient cases referred for psychiatric assessment were from the Internal medicine (42.3%), followed by ICU (23.3%), Surgery (12.8%), Orthopedics (9.8%) and Gynecology and Obstetrics (7.3%) specialty. Among the in- patient referral cases, the most common psychiatric diagnosis was substance dependence syndrome (39.2%), followed by anxiety disorder (17.1%), delirium due to general medical condition (12.2%), depression (6.7%), seizure disorder (6.7%) and intentional self harm (5.5%). Conclusion: Under Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, the most common diagnoses to look for are the substance dependence syndrome, anxiety disorder, delirium, depression, seizure disorder, self harm etc.