Search

Objective: Examinations are anecdotally viewed as extremely stressful to Singapore schoolchildren. We test this postulate by obtaining parental ratings of children's emotional stress levels longitudinally in a large representative sample of sixth (P6) and fifth (P5) class primary schoolchildren, respectively, exposed and unexposed to a streaming examination. Method: Children's stress levels were rated monthly by a parent for 10 months. Results: Analyses failed to find evidence of any differential stress impact across P6 and P5 comparison groups, apart from a subset of P6 children whose parents complied with every monthly survey. Conclusion: The streaming examination in the final year of primary school did not emerge as a general stressor to children, but achieved salience within a defined subset of children whose parents were highly study compliant. Study compliance may be a proxy variable of some import, and have wider relevance to other cohort studies and to intervention trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Studies comparing older and younger depressed patients have variably identified differing and similar clinical feature patterns, an inconsistency requiring clarification and explanation. If influential, age may have a true phenotypic effect or be a secondary influence reflecting depressive sub-type differences. If age is primarily influential, then, after controlling for depressive sub-type differences its effect should impact on clinical features — even in non-western regions. Methods We therefore undertook a study in Singapore, comparing 42 elderly and 28 younger patients of a Singapore psychiatric hospital, and with the diagnostic sub-type profile similar across the age-based groups. Results Despite the elderly group being some 35 years older, both at first episode and when surveyed, and having a distinctly higher rate of physical disorders, few clinical differences were identified. While the elderly group reported a less severe depressed mood and more ‘somatic’ symptoms, analyses indicated that such differences were accounted for by education and language factors, and were compatible with the view that Chinese subjects historically report depression more ‘somatically’. Conclusion We conclude that, in a non-western, largely Chinese sample of depressed patients, few differences in the phenotypic expression of depression were identified, perhaps reflecting similar distributions of depressive sub-types across the groups, an issue which may have muddied interpretation of western studies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: If the established winter excess in births of people who subsequently develop schizophrenia is an effect of 'seasonality', this would be testable by examining the pattern of births in an equatorial region with no formal seasons.Aims: To investigate whether there is any variation in month of birth among patients from equatorial Singapore with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.Method: All 9655 patients discharged from Singapore's national psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were included (year of birth range 1930-1984). We analysed aggregated data, as well as the data of subsamples grouped according to birth-year periods, in order to examine secular trends. One patient subsample (those born 1960-84) allowed exact matching against the general population data set and close testing of any seasonal influence.Results: Monthly variation in births was evident for both patients and controls; the patterns were very similar, apart from the patient sample showing a trough in March-April.Conclusions: In an equatorial region, where 'seasons' are absent, no seasonal excess in births of those later developing schizophrenia was evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A series of surveys of mental health literacy have been undertaken in Australia, involving members of the general public as well as general practitioners and mental health professionals, whereby respondents consider vignettes of depression and of schizophrenia, offer a diagnosis and rate a series of possible interventions for their judged helpfulness. A similar survey was undertaken in Singapore and is reported in this paper.Methods: The survey was undertaken at a large state psychiatric hospital with staff (psychiatrists, allied health professionals, psychiatrically and generally trained nursing staff) rating a vignette of mania, in addition to the vignettes derived in Australia for depression and schizophrenia, and with the Australian intervention options extended somewhat to respect Singapore facilities.Results: Responses of those in the four professional groups were compared. The psychiatrists were highly accurate in generating diagnoses, other staff somewhat less so for diagnosing depression (with a percentage instead choosing a diagnosis of stress) and mania (with a percentage instead diagnosing a schizophrenic condition). Reported helpfulness ratings identified those interventions judged consensually as likely to be helpful or harmful, as well as establishing some differences across the four professional groups.Conclusions: The consensus decisions of helpful treatments for depression and schizophrenia revealed very similar findings to judgements made by Australian professionals. The treated outcome of schizophrenia was judged as somewhat worse than that for mania and depression. While non-medical staff differed from psychiatrists in judging the comparative utility of some drug interventions and lifestyle issues, there was clear evidence of a relatively dominant 'medical model' to recommended treatments, while traditional healing practices and services were rated as distinctly unhelpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]