Tehran University Medical Journal

---

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).

---

This study was carried out to examine the comorbidity of depression and anxiety disorders.
Materials and Methods: 261 depressed (n=153) and anxious (n=108) patients were psychiatrically interviewed, and then tested by two scales, BAI and BD1 261 healthy subjects (matched with depressed and anxious patients) completed BAT and BDl as well.
Results: The results showed that %55.6 of depressed and %58.3 of anxious patients had respectively a comorbid anxiety and depression disorders.
Conclusion: The detection of symptoms overlap revealed that depressed patients experienced most of the anxiety symptoms, and anxious patients reported most of the depression symptoms. The prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms among healthy subjects will be discussed.

---

Background: This Study aimed to validate the temperament and character inventory (TCI) in an Iranian sample of men and women with different ages. TCI contains subscales designed to measure seven different personality traits and characteristics.

Materials and Methods: In the first step, subjects (n=1212) completed the questionnaire. In the second step, to examine the reliability of the questionnaire, 101 randomly chosen subjects were re-tested one to two months after the first test. Also, in order to examine the validity of the questionnaire, 100 subjects were interviewed by two psychologists using a checklist based on the Cloninger&aposs biological theory of personality. The interviewers, who were blind to the subjects&apos scores on the seven subscales, rated each subject for the seven traits and characteristics on a 10-point rating scale (from 1 to 10).

Results & Conclusion: The results showed normative data for the subscales novelty seeking (NS), harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence (RD), persistence (Per), self directiveness (SD), cooperation (Co) and self transcendence (ST) for different gender and age classes. Correlations between the scores and ratings of the test and re-test revealed significant coefficients, confirming reliability for all subscales. A good internal consistency was found for each subscale. The results also showed no significant correlations higher than 0.40 among NS, HA, Per and RD the temperament subscales were independent from each other. The only significant correlation, higher than 0.40, among the character subscales was between SD and Co. Applied and clinical implication of the present findings will be discussed.

---

Background: Burnout is one of the most important factors in reduced productivity in organizations and involves physical and mental signs, especially in the human service professions. The role of nurses in the healthcare system is vital and motivation to ensure health security is extremely important. We carried out this research to examine the relationship between burnout and mental health in the nursing staff of educational hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among 200 nurses selected via probable multistage sampling. We used three instruments in this study: 1) demographic questionnaire 2) General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) and 3) Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI).
Results: On the whole, using the MBI subscale, we found low levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and high levels of reduced sense of personal accomplishment, both in frequency and intensity. The prevalence of symptomatic samples in the GHQ-28 was 43%, and two variables, burnout and poor mental health, were related (p<0.001). Burnout was to be related to gender, age and years of work. The correlation between poor mental health and years of work as well as hours of work in a week were significant.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that there is a strong correlation between poor mental health and burnout. Furthermore, the prevalence of symptomatic samples detected in our study using the GHQ-28 was much higher than that reported in studies of the general population. The high prevalence of symptomatic samples and high prevalence of burnout in the dimension of self accomplishment, especially in younger nurses, combined with the strong correlation between poor mental health and burnout all show that care should be taken to improve the stressful conditions that nurses face.

---

Background: Measuring anxiety level in clinical and non-clinical population needs valid and reliable tool. This research examined the validity and reliability of Beck Anxiety Inventory in Iranian normal population as well as clinically anxious patients.

Methods: First, a two-session course was run to train research workers. After they were sufficiently prepared, they were dispatched to different regions of the city, Tehran, referring to residential places for men and women volunteer to take part in the research. At the end, 1513 respondents were randomly recruited and tested using Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Of this population, 112 respondents were randomly selected and re-tested in order to measure test-retest reliability with a one-month interval time between first and second tests. Meanwhile, 261 clinically anxious patients (from clinics and mental health centers) were tested. In order to measure validity, 150 patients were interviewed by two parallel clinicians and the anxiety level was rated based on a 10-point scale from 0 (the least) to 10 (the most). The two raters were blind to the BAI scores of the patients.    

Results: For data reduction and analysis, the SPSS for Windows-edition 14, was conducted. Findings showed that the Persian version of BAI proved a good reliability (r=0.72, p<0.001), a very good validity (r=0.83, p<0.001), and an excellent internal consistency (Alpha=0.92).

Conclusions: The results support the applicability of BAI in Iranian population and suggest the use of this inventory for clinical and research aims. Persian version of BAI not only can help clinicians in assessment and diagnosis, but also assist researchers to evaluate anxiety level when needed.