The number of suicide attempts in developing countries has been increasing progressively, as in the West. It is important to note that much of the data on suicidal behaviour is based on information obtained from developed Western societies. All such data need to be evaluated within their specific cultural context as well as cross-culturally. The present study explored the various socio-demographic, clinical characteristics of suicide attempters in a general hospital unit in India. There were certain findings that contrasted markedly with those observed in the West. Male suicides tended to predominate here, as in many Indian studies. None of them were living alone, separated or deserted by their partner. Some suicide attempters continued to live with their extended family. There was virtually no alcohol consumption by female suicide attempters. The commonest agents used were organophosphates and other household poisons. Several cross-cultural variations in the suicidal act emerged compared to the West. The 'suicide potential' in the Indian culture is discussed.

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Optic neuritis in India appears similar to that in the West with nearly 50% developing MS in the long term.

The present work deals with the evaluation of a high-performance liquid chromatography laser-induced fluorescence (HPLC-LIF) technique developed in our laboratory for early detection of oral cancer from protein profiles of body fluids. The results show that protein profiles of serum samples from a given class of samples, say, normal, premalignant, or malignant, are statistically very close to each other, while profiles of members of any class are significantly different from other classes. The performance of the technique is evaluated by the use of sensitivity and specificity pairs, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, and Youden's Index. The technique uses protein profile differences in serum samples, registered by the HPLC-LIF technique. The study is carried out using serum samples from volunteers diagnosed as normal or premalignant clinically, and as malignant by histopathology. The specificities and sensitivities of the HPLC-LIF method at an ideal threshold (M-distance = 2) for normal, malignant, and premalignant classes are 100, 69.5, and 61.5%, and 86.5, 87.5, and 87.5% respectively.

Nursing is, by its very nature, an occupation subject to a high degree of stress. Every day the nurse confronts stark suffering, grief, and death as few other people do. Many nursing tasks are mundane and unrewarding. Many are by normal standards distasteful, even disgusting, others are often degrading; some are simply frightening.Workplace stress has long been recognised as a challenge for the nursing profession. Objectives of the study were-To determine stress and coping of nurses and to find its association with selected variables. The study population consisted of 1040 registered nurses working in selected medical college hospitals and government hospitals of Udupi and Mangalore districts. Descriptive survey design was used to conduct the study.Purposive sampling was used to select the samples. Data were gathered by administering background proforma, stress and coping questionnaires. Majority of the subjects i.e. 60.38% experience low stress, 38.46% experience moderate stress and stress was high among 1.15% of the subjects. Significant association is found between stress and professional qualification, marital status, and area of work. There is significant association between coping and marital status. There was no significant association between coping and other demographic variables. Kruskal-Wallis test computed for total years of experience (z = 21.21, p<0.001) and experience in current area (z = 11.07, p< 0.01) and coping of nurses was significant.

Constipation was prevalent in more than half of patients receiving clozapine, which was severe and took longer time for recovery. Limitations include using a hospital-based sample and that dietary habits and lifestyle factors were not studied.

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