Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common cause of neurological disability in young adults and is frequently accompanied by symptoms of depression and anxiety. The aim of this study was to explore the association of depression and anxiety with health status in younger and older MS patients.

223 MS patients (67.3% female; mean age 38.9±10.8 years; mean disease duration 5.8±5.2 years) were divided into younger and older age groups (< 45 and ≥45 years). They completed questionnaires focusing on sociodemographic data, depression and anxiety (HADS), and physical and mental health status (SF-36). Functional disability (EDSS) was assessed by a neurologist. To analyse the data, a U-test and multiple linear regression analyses were performed.

A model consisting of age, gender, marital status, EDSS, depression and anxiety explained 46.6% of the variance in physical health status and 60.8% of the variance in mental health status (p≤.001). Depression was a significant predictor of physical health status in older MS patients and was associated with mental health status in both age groups (p≤0.001). Anxiety was related to worse physical and mental health status in younger MS patients, but not in the older ones.

Depression in MS patients is associated with mental health status and with physical health status only in the older group; anxiety is associated only in younger MS patients with regard to their health status. Psychiatric diagnostics focusing on depression and anxiety might be important for treatment of MS patients in order to contribute to improving a patient's health status.

Due to the implementation of the DRGs (Diagnosis Related Groups) in the somatic departments of general hospitals, an elevated demand for psychiatric consultations can be anticipated. It is a moot question whether psychiatric consultation services are adequate for such a surplus load. We investigated whether the proportion of psychiatric consultation requests for patient's capacity to consent and for guardianship is rising.

The DRGs were implemented in the somatic departments of the Ev. Krankenhaus Königin Elisabeth Herzberge (KEH) at the end of 2003. We compared consultation requests with the keywords “capacity to consent”, “capacity to enter contracts” and “need for guardianship” in the year 2002 with 2004.

Significantly more consultations with the keyword “guardianship” were requested in 2004 compared to 2002 (p=0.019). 56% concerned medical questions regarding capacity of consent. There was a slight, but increase in the requests social reasons.

The confirmation of the indication for the appointment of a guardian decreased inversely without statistical significance (80% in 2002 and 64% in 2004; Chi-Square p=0.058).

The increasing demand of the consiliary-liason-service was confirmed in our investigation. It is possible that the implementation of the DRGs plays a role in the increase of psychiatric consultation request. As a trial to ease the growing burden, we developed a form which also enables colleagues from the somatic departments to apply for guardianship of their patients without psychiatric assistance.

To evaluate of cerebellum role in cognitive and social organization also during development.

We report 25 children with different kinds of acquired cerebellar lesions (12 with hemispheric astrocytoma, 12 with vermis medulloblastoma, and 1 with hemispheric stroke) who showed different clinical patterns according to the lesion localization. All subject were studied by neurological examination and MRI. Neuropsychological assessment included:

• • observation of spontaneous behaviour;

• • Recording of spontaneous language;

• • Intelligence evaluation (WISC-test);

• • Language evaluation;

• • Memory evaluation;

• • Assessment of frontal lobe functions (categorical memory, sequential memory, language fluency, design fluency, flexibility of reasoning and problem solving).

These data confirm that the connections from the cerebellum to the associative cortical areas are operative very early and that the cerebellum has an essential role in cognitive and social organization also during development.

Happiness has been associated with a number of individual and societal factors, but much of the individual-to-individual variation in happiness remains unexplained. The purpose of this paper is to examine a broad range of social and psychological correlates of self-rated happiness in Europe.

We used data from the European Social Survey to determine levels of happiness in individuals (n=30,816) from seventeen European countries and to identify associations between happiness and age, gender, family relationships, satisfaction with income, employment status, community trust, satisfaction with health, satisfaction with democracy, religious belief and country of residence.

Self-rated happiness varies significantly between European countries, with individuals in Denmark reporting the highest levels of happiness and individuals in Bulgaria reporting the lowest levels. On multi-variable analysis, happiness is positively correlated with younger age, satisfaction with household income, being employed, high community trust and religious belief. Overall, these factors account for 22.5% of the individual-to-individual variation in happiness in Europe.

For the individual, this study highlights the strength of association between happiness and the individual's attitudes towards various aspects of their personal, household and societal circumstances. For social policy-makers, this study confirms the potential usefulness of civic measures to increase community trust and social capital. Further studies of the inter-relationships between individual and community-level variables would assist in further explaining the variance in happiness between individuals and countries.

Small number of prestigious scientific journals publishes most of the world's scientific information. Although scientists in developing countries represent 25% of the world's scientific community national journals from this 'scientific periphery' are poorly visible: the Science Citation Index (SCI) included less than 2% of these journals in 1995.

A vicious cycle of inadequacy for these journals: small number and poor quality of manuscripts submitted, inadequate review process, and imperfect English prevents them from reaching higher visibility and eventually escaping form anonymity. Key problems seem to be poorly designed and unoriginal research, lack of knowledge of research methods and data presentation.

1. 1. Teaching principles of scientific research in medical schools.

2. 2. Author-friendly editorial policy - a procedure where most of the articles received are pre-reviewed intramurally and improved by providing guidance to the authors, before being sent out for extramural review.

3. 3. Proactive board of editors - who seek interesting research and encourage researchers to communicate their results.

4. 3. Networking regional collaboration.

In the case of Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) that followed and partly developed the 'treatment' described, such policy resulted in significant formal success - inclusion of CMJ in the most selective international indexing databases (MEDLINE, Current Contents and Web of Science), open access status, decent visibility and attention of researches (impact factor 1.2). The original, active and efficacious approach of the editors of CMJ will be analyzed in this presentation.

Ramón y Cajal Hospital is the reference centre for Madrid-Barajas airport. Passengers at the airport who need medical assistance are brought to this hospital. A percentage of these passengers require psychiatric evaluation and frequently need to stay inward for a certain term.

Calculate the approximate costs derived from the inward stay at the Psychiatry ward of patients referred from Madrid-Barajas airport.

Revise retrospectively clinical histories of inward psychiatric patients referred from Barajas airport in the last 5 years. The Department of Economic management of the hospital has provided the costs of stay at the Psychiatry ward for the year 2007 (395 euros per day). Data is analyzed using the SPSS software 15.0 version.

The average stay of these patients is 13.96 days. Then, the average cost is 5514.2 euros. Extrapolating these data to our sample, we notice that being the reference centre for an international airport supposes an estimated cost of 545.905.8 euros (109181.16 per year) due to inward stay of psychiatric patients.

The psychiatric attention to the airport population represents an economic extra charge that has an impact on the hospital and the National Health System. We only expose the charge derived from inward stay. To obtain a more realistic overall result we should add the costs of the attention at the emergency room to the result above.

Latency period between brain damage and the beginning of the psychotic symptoms is a very controversial remark, when we are trying to sharpen in the etiology of a postraumatic psychosis.

Our work is based on a systemic review of the articles published related to TBI and psychosis.

The average latency period is between 4 and 5 years, including a wide range of time from days to years.

Results may not be very accurate because in some articles any psychotic sympton is included even if there is not a complete psychotic disorder as described in DSM-IV.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) cause a wide range of after-effects, including psychiatric disorders. Psychosis although uncommon is a very serious consequences with important functional, therapeutical and legal implications.

Our work is based on a systemic review of the articles published related to TBI and psychosis.

Delirious psychosis are twice more common than schizophrenia-like psychosis (28% to 14%).

Delusions and hallucinations are predominant over passive phenomena or negative symptoms.

Evolution and chronicity of postraumatic psychosis depends on the severity of the TBI and on the psychiatric and neurological previous conditions.

Treatment is the same as used for typical psychosis, even though side effects are more frequent.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterised by emotional dysregulation; abnormal emotional information processing is likely to be a component of genetic predisposition to BD.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging data was collected during an event-related facial affect recognition task (fearful, angry, sad expressions), from: 41 BDI patients, 22 of their unaffected siblings, and 51 controls. A random effects analysis was implemented using SPM5.

Patients, relative to controls had significantly:

1. a. reduced activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus and middle occipital gyrus and,

2. b. enhanced activation bilaterally in the posterior cingulate and in the left postcentral gyrus; in the temporal lobe, increased activation was seen in the hippocampus and amygdale bilaterally and in the middle and inferior temporal gyri.

In BD patients there is evidence of increased limbic activation and decreased cortical efficiency during facial affect processing; increased ventral PFC activation in siblings, in the presence of increased limbic activation, may serve as a compensatory mechanism mediating resilience to disease expression.

To examine genetic influences the anatomy of the Corpus Callosum (CC) in Bipolar Disorder (BD) by examining first-degree relatives in addition to BD patients.

We compared CCl size and shape in 180 individuals: 70 with BD, 45 of their unaffected first-degree relatives, and 75 healthy controls. The CC was extracted from a mid-sagittal slice from T1-weighted magnetic resonance images; its total area, length and curvature were compared across groups. A non-parametric permutation method was used to examine for alterations in width of the callosum along 39 points.

Validating our previous findings, a significant global reduction in CC thickness was seen in BD patients, with a disproportionate thinning in the anterior body. First-degree relatives did not differ in CC size or shape from controls. Duration of illness was associated with thinning in the anterior body, whereas Lithium treatment associated with thicker anterior CC midbody.

Global and regional CC thinning is a disease related feature of BD and may not represent a marker of familial disposition.

Prevention of suicidal risk is the primary goal for private psychiatrists. However there are few evidence-base data to guide clinicians in the management of suicidal patients.

To describe the epidemiological profile of psychiatric outpatients at severe risk of suicide and to compare it with patients at no suicidal risk.

The GICIPI database totalized 7508 outpatients having at least one diagnosis on the MINI 5.0.0 life version, as of 31DEC2007. Patients with either no suicidal risk or a severe risk on the MINI were selected for analysis. Demographic, socio professional, diagnostic and psychometric parameters were compared between the two groups.

Both groups had a similar mean age (40.3 vs 41.4 years). Data showed that the patients with a severe risk of suicide were more likely to be separated (13.29% vs 5.17%), divorced (10.76% vs 5.36%) or single (43.54 vs 28.48%). The mean weight of the two groups was comparable (72.1 kg vs 70.7 kg). The sex ratio was similar in both groups (69.6% women vs 68.6% men). There were no differences in the distribution of socio professional categories. Most strikingly, although the initial MADRS scores were higher in patients at high risk of suicide (27.1 vs 23), the HAMA scores were significantly lower (5.4 vs. 15.2).

These results will be compared to the literature, and a profile of the patient at high risk of suicide, as seen in everyday private practice, will be described, hence helping to improve the management of these suicidal outpatients.