Background: Stigma can prevent care and treatment of mentally ill. About 54% of diagnosable mental disorders are seen in primary care settings. There is a gross underestimation of psychiatric morbidity among patients by substantial proportion of non-psychiatric clinicians. Hence there is a need to assess the attitude towards mental illness among doctors and staff nurses. The objectives of the study were to assess the attitude towards mental illness among doctors and nurses, to compare the attitude between doctors and nurses, to find if there is any correlation between duration of training or posting and attitude, to find if educational status had any influence on attitude, to find if there is any gender influence on attitude. Methods: It is a cross sectional descriptive study conducted in a private medical college, Pondicherry among doctors and nurses who had completed their under graduation with a sample size of 221 (Doctors-120, Nurses-101). The instruments used were a semi-structured demographic profile and 34 items of OMICC (Opinion About Mental Illness in Chinese Community). The data was entered in Microsoft Excel 2013 analyzed using descriptive statistics, unpaired t-test, pearson’s correlation coefficient.Results: Only 25% of doctors and 4.9% of nurses positive attitude when overall score was considered. Doctors group had higher positive attitudes compared to nurses in domains separatism, stereotyping, benevolence and stigmatisation.Conclusions: There was no correlation between duration of psychiatry posting and attitude.

PURPOSE. Since, to our knowledge, there are no reports on the prevalence of the blaNDM-1 gene among ocular isolates of Enterobacteriaceae, and only limited information on the prevalence of extended spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) among ocular bacterial isolates are available, our study was undertaken. METHODS.A prospective study was done on 74 Enterobacteriaceae isolates from patients presenting with clinical suspicion of bacterial ocular infections during a period from January 2010-December 2011. All isolates were subjected to detection of ESBLs by double disc synergy and screened for the presence of CTX-M -I, II, III, and IV groups, and OXA, TEM, SHV, blaNDM-1 genes by PCR. RESULTS.Of 74 ocular Enterobacteriaceae isolates 57 (77%) were ESBL producers tested by the double disc diffusion test. PCR-based DNA sequencing of these 57 ocular isolates showed the presence of CTX-M-15 (14.0%), blaOXA-1 (5.2%), blaSHV-1 (8.7%), and blaTEM-1 (7.0%) types. The blaNDM-1 was absent among these ocular isolates. The most widely disseminated ESBL gene among ocular isolates was CTX-M-15. Phenotypic and genotypic results showed 100% correlation.CONCLUSIONS. To our knowledge, this is the first extensive study performed to genotype ESBL-producing ocular Enterobacteriaceae isolates. The isolation of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae organisms predominantly from conjunctival specimens indicates community-acquired infections/colonization by these bacteria in the conjunctiva of the patients, and cases are not related to hospital-acquired infections because of the short stay of ophthalmic patients in the hospitals. A shift in the resistance rates of ceftazidime from 37.5% to 79.7% over the years proves the increase in drug resistance among ocular clinical isolates. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2012;53:5251-5257)

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract