Search

Over the past few years, malingered psychosis has had a progressive occurrence since a great deal of attention has been directed to the closures of long-stay psychiatric institutions and care in the community. Therefore, malingered psychosis needs to be identified to conduct precise forensic assessments and prevent miscarriages of justice and misuse of restricted healthcare resources. Although, over the past decades, researchers have introduced a number of workable psychometric strategies and tools for diagnosing true psychosis, it is still sometimes challenging to differentiate between true and malingered psychosis. Hence, identifying reliable and innovative diagnostic alternatives seems crucial. Accordingly, a summary of gathered evidence is provided by the present review for enhancing future evaluation of oropharyngeal microbiome composition as a practical indicator for diagnosing true psychosis in a forensic psychiatric setting. As per the systematic search terms (namely, “diagnostic marker,” “oropharyngeal microbiome,” “forensic psychiatric setting,” “psychosis,” and “oropharyngeal microbiota”), relevant English publications were searched from January 1, 1980, to September 15, 2023, in Scopus, the Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases. Finally, eight articles were included in the present review. Also, we adopted the narrative technique so that the material synthesis leads to a cohesive and compelling story. The results revealed that the periodontal disease and saliva microbiome were possibly associated with true psychosis. Thus, since oropharyngeal microbial compositions are highly different among healthy controls and patients with true psychosis, future research can take advantage of saliva to differentiate between fake and true fake psychosis throughout the initial stages of forensic psychiatric assessment. As a substrate of interest, saliva could also be used for characterizing the various stages of psychosis under a forensic psychiatric setting.

Introduction: Due to the importance of sleep disorders and the unknown effects that they may have on the course of the disease in COVID-19 patients, in this study, we aimed to investigate the factors affecting sleep disorders in these patients. Materials and Methods: The present research was a cross-sectional analytical study conducted in Razi Hospital in Rasht. The study population included COVID-19 patients referred to the corona clinic of Razi Hospital for follow-up. Information about age, gender, body mass index (BMI), underlying disease, drugs used, a history of using cigarette and opioids, duration of hospitalization, and type of hospitalization (normal ward or the intensive care unit (ICU) ward) was extracted from patients’ files and recorded in the data collection form. The Petersburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to assess sleep disorders. The collected data were entered into SPSS software version 24. The significance level of the tests was considered P < 0.05. Results: The mean age of the subjects in this study was 43.79 years. According to the results, 52 people were male (52.5%) and the rest were female. Based on the results, it was found that age (p = 0.540), gender (p = 0.141), BMI (p= 0.464), cigarette use (p = 0.675), opium use (p = 0.757), underlying disease (p = 0.430), drug use (p = 0.327), and duration of hospitalization (p = 0.203) were not significantly associated with sleep disorders. Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, sleep in patients with COVID-19 is not associated with age, gender, cigarette use, opium use, underlying disease, duration of hospitalization, and a history of drug use.

Examination and intervention are always the causes of agitation, anxiety, and fear in children’s lives. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of promethazine hydrochloride in reducing children’s agitation during the ocular examination for trauma. In this interventional-clinical trial study, a total of 62 children referred to Al-Zahra Ophthalmology Hospital in Zahedan, Iran, were evaluated in two matched groups (case (n = 31) and control (n = 31)) for an initial examination of ocular trauma. Finally, the intervention was performed (giving placebo or promethazine hydrochloride cough syrup 20 minutes before the initial ocular examination at 0.5 mg/kg), and the demographic information form and researcher-made questionnaire modeled on the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI) were completed. The obtained results revealed that the mean scores of physical/aggressive behaviors (p ˂ 0.001), physical/nonaggressive behaviors (p = 0.013), verbal/aggressive behaviors (p ˂ 0.001), and hiding behaviors (p ˂ 0.001) were significantly lower in the promethazine hydrochloride-receiving group than the placebo group. These findings demonstrated that promethazine hydrochloride cough syrup facilitated the examination among the pediatric patients who suffered from traumatic ocular injuries. However, further studies in this field need to be carried out through randomized controlled trials.