Tehran University Medical Journal

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Documented war experiences have provided early descriptions of different group of psychiatric features. A combat soldier with palpitation and chest pains was felt to have a functional cardiac disturbance, called soldier's heart. Anxiety and other symptoms indicating increased arousal were called shell shock and were thought to be related to lesions in the central nervous system (CNS). Describing analytically war events could operate with an enormous emotional intensity breaking through the ego defences and flooding it with an uncontrollable anxiety. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) delineates a syndrome developing after a discrete traumatic event in a stress setting. Diagnostic conceptualization which tie PTSD to stress and trauma invariably involve two different approaches from two different theoretical bases: the concepts dealing with trauma on the one hand (which could effect on CNS) and those dealing with stress-response theory on the other. Author emphasizes on viewing the patients who complain of war psychiatric effects in three categories: (1) Non PTSD diagnoses that the patient ought to be treated accordingly (2) Traumatic neurosis which has overwhelming war stress related emotional aspects and is occurred in predisposed individuals. This category is suggested to be classified as post war stress disorder specifically, to be differentiated from other post traumatic psychiatric categories. (3) Author also suggests the third category as post traumatic war stress syndrome which is thought to have organic origin. Symptoms such as hyperacusis, hyperirritability, tinnitus and particular type of head aches which are mostly refractory to treatment confirm the hypothesis.

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SCL-90-R-scale was used to asses 1184 enrolled medical colleges students, Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services. Out of nine orthogonal symptome dimensions of the instrument, paranoid ideation, interpersonal sensitivity and obsessive complusive were the most frequent in the study.
Difference between males and females was significant in depression, anxiety and phobic anxiety dimensions. Mean psychopathological dimensions in students with GPA lower than 14 were detected to be more significant than others

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Depression is a debilitating disease that every one is likely to experience over a short or long term period of his or her life.

Methods and Materials: This study aimed to examine the one - month prevalence of anxiety and depression in Tehranian resident population. 1070 men and women (age 20-65) were screened by Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Then, those who scored above the cut - off point were psychiatrically interviewed. The interviewers were blind to the respondents' scores on BDI 5% of the total sample were also added to the list of those to be interviewed. Interviewers were the third year psychiatric residents at Roozbeh hospital. Tehran, especially trained for this research's purpose.

Results: The results showed women (BDI- 12.16) are more depressed than men (BDI- 8.47). Furthermore, men (%16.7) were less likely to have depession disorders than women (% 30.50).

Conclusion: We will discuss discrepancies between (the present results and the results from previous research by others).

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Background: Vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia is defined as a prominent elongation, dilatation and tortuosity of the vertebral and basilar arteries. Ectatic basilar arteries may cause different neurological symptoms by several mechanisms including compressive effects and embolic or ischemic events.

Case presentation: In this report we present a 58-year old female patient who was admitted in Dr. Shariati General Hospital in Tehran, Iran with complaints of dysarthria, vertigo, ataxia and nausea. Neuro-imaging procedures (brain CT scan, CT angiography, and an MRI study of the blood vessels or MRA) were performed. Dilation and elongation, as well as tortuosity of the vertebral and basilar arteries revealed the diagnosis of vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. The patient was discharged from the hospital following the control of underlying diseases and neurological symptoms related to dolichoectasia without undergoing any invasive procedures.

Conclusion: Paying attention to any minor or major neurological symptoms, as well as underlying medical conditions along with the conservative control of symptoms can be most helpful. Invasive interventions in a chronically ill patient can be very risky, therefore, medical management including control of associated or underlying diseases is recommended as the first line of treatment.