Despite the wide consensus over the safety and efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), it still faces negative publicity and unfavorable attitudes of patients and families. Little is known about how the experience with ECT affects the patients' and their families' attitude toward it. The aim of this study was to examine a sample of Iranian patients and their families regarding their experience with ECT and to compare their knowledge and attitude toward ECT before and after this experience and their satisfaction with it. We surveyed 22 patients with major depressive disorder about to undergo ECT and 1 family member of each patient for their knowledge and attitude toward ECT and then surveyed them again after the trial of ECT to compare those variables while assessing their experience and satisfaction with ECT. Patients were rated using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Mini-Mental Status Examination before and after the treatment. We found that, before ECT, family members had a more favorable attitude toward ECT than patients, but after ECT, the patients' attitude changed more positively compared with their families. Both patients and their families had a poor knowledge of ECT before the ECT trial, but their total knowledge increased afterward, although not in the areas of indications and therapeutic effects. The majority of patients and their families found ECT to be beneficial and were satisfied with it. Satisfaction with ECT was independent of treatment outcome. There was a high rate of perceived coercion to consent to ECT. Attention should be paid toward educating patients and their families about the ECT process, indications, risks, safety, and effects as well as informing them about their freedom of choice and right to refuse.
This study was conducted to determine the impact of education using the Health Belief Model on preventing osteoporosis among female students. This interventional study (quasi-experimental) was performed on 45 female students aged 15-16 years old who resided in a town near Tehran. The females participated in a threeweek educational programme based on the Health Belief Model. The data collection instrument was a validated and reliable questionnaire in five sections: demographics, knowledge, Health Belief Model constructs, physical activity and consumption of foods containing calcium. The mean scores of students' knowledge were significantly different before and after the educational intervention (P < 0.05). The mean scores of some Health Belief Model structures changed significantly after the intervention (P < 0.05). Also post-intervention, physical activity increased (P = 0.041) but calcium intake did not. The use of an educational intervention on osteoporosis seems to improve knowledge and health beliefs and may positively impact physical activity-related behaviour.
Background: Recently herbs considered as biological and safe agents to treat, control and prevent of many health problems such as obesity and its complications.
Transit systems in which buses or trains always visit each and every stop along corridors are compared against those that feature two alternative vehicle-dispatching schemes. The alternatives entail so-called skip-stop and express/local services. Continuous models found in the literature are expanded so that the alternatives could be compared under a wider array of options. Comparisons are separately drawn for systems that feature buses, BRT and metro-rail trains, both for cities that are wealthy and for those that are not. Idealizations in regard to travel demand and route symmetry are assumed in pursuit of insights useful for high-level planning.Two rounds of parametric comparisons are conducted. In the first round, optimally-designed all-stop systems are presumably converted to furnish instead the alternative strategies without altering the original stop locations. In the second round, alternative schemes are designed in fully-optimized fashion from scratch. In both rounds, alternative dispatching schemes often bring lower generalized costs than do their optimally-designed all-stop counterparts. Estimated savings can reach 10% even in the first round where the alternative schemes are hampered by sub-optimal stop locations. If designed from scratch, the savings can reach 30%. Skip-stop service is found most often to be the lowest-cost option of the three.
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