•Global warming, and degradation of the environment, can have significant effects on mental health, and this is now a matter of urgent concern.•An increase of approximately 2°C in the past 175 years ...seems to have occurred in Bangalore. Several factors such as rapid and unplanned urbanization, high pollution index, and extremely poor green cover might contribute for this raise in temperature.•The south Asian countries have several cities like Bangalore. Unfortunately, these are also the places where there is a lack of medical care, and of mental health care services, especially for the poor, who often reside in the most stressed environments.•Health planners in LMIC countries need to focus urgently on global warming, to ensure a healthy future, both in terms of physical as well as mental health.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a heterogeneous illness, and emerging evidence suggests that different symptom dimensions may have distinct underlying neurobiological mechanisms. We aimed to ...look for familial patterns in the occurrence of these symptom dimensions in a sample of families with at least two individuals affected with OCD.
Data from 153 families (total number of individuals diagnosed with DSM-5 OCD = 330) recruited as part of the Accelerator Program for Discovery in Brain Disorders using Stem Cells (ADBS) was used for the current analysis. Multidimensional Item Response Theory (IRT) was used to extract dimensional scores from the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) checklist data. Using linear mixed-effects regression models, intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), for each symptom dimension, and within each relationship type were estimated.
IRT yielded a four-factor solution with Factor 1 (Sexual/Religious/Aggressive), Factor 2 (Doubts/Checking), Factor 3 (Symmetry/Arranging), and Factor 4 (Contamination/Washing). All except for Factor 1 were found to have significant ICCs, highest for Factor 3 (0.41) followed by Factor 4 (0.29) and then Factor 2 (0.27). Sex-concordant dyads were found to have higher ICC values than discordant ones, for all the symptom dimensions. No major differences in the ICC values between parent-offspring and sib-pairs were seen.
Our findings indicate that there is a high concordance of OCD symptom dimensions within multiplex families. Symptom dimensions of OCD might thus have significant heritability. In view of this, future genetic and neurobiological studies in OCD should include symptom dimensions as a key parameter in their analyses.
In this work, a commercial MMC (A359-20% SiCP) was remelted, diluted to different particle contents (5 to 20 vol. %), and foamed at a fixed temperature using titanium hydride. In general, excellent ...foamability could be obtained for all SiC contents. Foam stability (retention of expansion), on the other hand, depended on SiC content. Remelting and diluting procedures also influenced the foam stability on account of varied oxide contents generated upon impeller stirring. The foam quality, in terms of cell wall integrity, improved with increasing SiC content. Despite the defect levels, good compression properties were obtained in these foams, which are close to model predictions. Overall, this system is very promising for producing good quality foams by melt processing technique.
•Catatonia can be multifactorial in etiology even in an individual patient.•Mutism secondary to OC symptoms in patients with Schizophrenia.•Response of mutism to SSRI treatment.