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

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.

The aims of this study were to investigate whether Turkish dancers are at risk of eating disorders, and to identify any gender and elite vs. amateur differences. The study involved 100 participants (64 females and 36 males) divided into three groups: 6lite dancers, amateur dancers and controls. The elite dancers were the members of the State Conservatoire; the amateur dancers were university students attending university dance clubs; the control group consisted of university students who were not members of dance clubs. All of the participants completed the Eating Attitude Test and a questionnaire about eating habits. Both the elite and amateur dancers had more pathological eating attitudes than the controls. Females had more problematic eating attitudes than males. Both elite and amateur female Turkish dancers may be at risk for disordered eating. The implications for prevention are discussed.

No abstract