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Background: Psychiatric stressors and morbidity can be both cause and effect of myocardial infarction. Various life events acting as psychological stressors can precipitate acute myocardial infarction. Acute MI can lead to plethora of psychiatric morbidities, including various degrees of depression and anxiety. Studies from India are scarce on the subject. Aims and objectives: To assess the occurrence of stressful life events and level of psychiatric morbidity (anxiety and depression) in the post myocardial infarction period among myocardial infarction patients and to compare them with a randomly selected non-myocardial infarction control group. Methods: The study was an analytical cross sectional study, conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital. The study subjects consisted of 50 patients with present acute MI episode, 50 post MI subjects after 6 months of MI episode and 50 healthy controls. Presumptive Stressful Life Event Scale (PSLES) was used to assess stressful life events, DSM-IV TR Diagnostic criteria and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A) were used to assess the severity of depression/anxiety. Results: The proportion of people with 2 or more stressors was higher in MI group, compared to non MI group (82% Vs 60%). The proportion of moderate and severe depression was 34% and 10% in post MI group, where as it was 2% and 0% in control group. The proportion of subjects with anxiety was higher among post MI group, compared to controls. The proportion of moderate and severe anxiety was 12% and 24% in post MI group, where as none of the subjects in control group had anxiety. Conclusions: There is a strong association between stressful life events, depression, anxiety and Myocardial infarction.

Background: Alcohol is the world's third largest risk factor for disease and disability. The mortality and morbidity associated with alcoholism is compounded by the concept of risk taking. Heavy alcohol use is associated with varieties of high risk behavior such as motor vehicle accidents, high risk sexual behavior, criminal acts and self injurious behavior. Aims and objectives: To evaluate the association between severity of alcohol dependence and high risk taking behavior, sociodemographic factors and personality variables in male patients with alcohol dependence syndrome attending a tertiary care hospital in south India. Methods: The study is an observational study conducted in the department of psychiatry in a tertiary care teaching hospital. The severity of alcohol dependence was assessed using Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire and relationship of high- risk behavior to alcohol use was determined by asking about that ‘critical incident’ to define the role of alcohol during the incident. Results: A total of 50 subjects were included in the final analysis out of which 28(56%) belonged to 20 to 40 years and the remaining 22 (44%) belonged to 41 to 60 year age group. The high risk behavior was 66% (95% CI 51.2% to 78.8%) in the study population. The association between severity of alcohol dependence and high risk behavior, the association between sensation seeking score, impulsivity score and high risk behavior was statistically significant (p-value