Elif Peksevim has received her BA in Psychology from Ozyegin University in 2016 and her MSc in Mental Health Studies from King’s College London in 2018. Her research topic is to evaluate the effectiveness of response inhibition training on compulsive buying which has been suggested to be an impulse control related disorder. Her aim is to come up with a novel treatment approach for compulsive buying where the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been to be limited. She previously held in various internships including French Lape Hospital, Institute of Behavioral Science, and Bethlem Royal Hospital. Her research interests are centered on behaviour change, self-control and dual-process theory.

Statement of the Problem: Impairment in inhibitory control has been suggested to be associated with major such as overeating, substance use and gambling. Albeit response inhibition training (training to inhibit one’s responses) has been found to be effective for these disorders, not any previous research has attempted to explore the role of inhibitory control and apply such training for compulsive buying as compulsive buying has been also found to be underpinned by a deficit in inhibition.

 

Aim: This study aims to explore the effectiveness of response inhibition training on compulsive acquisition as a first attempt to support novel treatment approaches.

 

Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: Sixty-nine individuals with a relatively high compulsive acquisition were selected from a non-clinical student population and were allocated to a randomized, double blind design to receive four 10-min sessions of go/no-go training in either active or inactive condition. In training, participants were told to withhold their responses to either chosen items (active condition) or to faces and landscapes (inactive condition). Participants were told to complete the training pre- and post intervention and provided self-report measures of compulsive acquisition at pre, post and follow up.

 

Findings: Participants in the active condition showed a significant reduction in the likeability of both chosen and corresponding items compared to participants in the inactive condition in which a slight reduction was observed only at follow-up. Not any association between intervention and shopping tasks, three main self-report measures was found. There was also no observed effect of intervention on the number of bought items and total spending.

 

Conclusion & Significance: This is the first study to investigate the effectiveness of response inhibition training on compulsive acquisition. The results show that future studies are warranted to look at the role of inhibitory control and evaluate the training effect.

Hamood Alkiyumi is a senior Psychiatry Resident at Oman Medical Specialty Board in Sultanate of Oman. He is also a Registered doctor at Ministry of Health in the Sultanate. His research interests are child Psychiatry disorders and stress management programs for healthy individuals and people with mental disorders.

Recently, he has focused more on psychological interventions for people with depression.

Objectives: Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder in children. Many studies have proven that depression is common in children with epilepsy.

 

Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the proportion of depressive symptoms along with demographic data in children diagnosed with epilepsy in a tertiary care institution in Oman.

 

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between June 2016 and August 2018. We have included 75 children with age group from five to 12 years old, attending epilepsy clinic at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital who were diagnosed with epilepsy and already on treatment. Patients were excluded if they have mental retardation. Validated Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC) questionnaire was utilized to assess the level of depressive symptoms among children. In addition, we have looked at associated factors including seizure status in the last three months, compliance to antiepileptic medications, type of epilepsy and number of antiepileptic medications.

 

Results: In this study, we found that depressive symptoms were present in 39 (52%) of patients. We also found that 96% of the patients were compliant to medications. In addition, seizure was present in the last three months in 48% of the sample studies. There was no statistically significant association between any of the studied variables and depression.

 

Conclusions: Although depression is highly prevalent in children with epilepsy, this study did not find any significant association between the CES-DC scores and the studied factors.

Emilija Nikolic is a full Professor in the Medical Faculty at University of Montenegro, for teaching classes in Physiotherapy in Pulmology, Cardiopulmonological Physiotherapy and Health Education and Hygiene, Physiology of neural system at the Faculty of Philosophy, department of psychology in Niksic. She was part of the Scientific Activity Team of the Lomonosov University, Department of Chemical Enzymology, for research related to the application of immunoassays and molecular diagnostics in gene and viral diseases. She has published more than 15 papers in reputed journals. She was hired as an Expert Associate at the Center for Pulmonary Diseases and Tuberculosis at the Health Center, Herceg Novi.

Asthma leads to physical, emotional and social limitations for patients and impairs their quality of life. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of acupuncture the psychological condition and the quality of life in asthma patients. In total, 120 patients with asthma who were treated at the Mediterranean Health Centre, Igalo, Montenegro were included in this study. The experimental group (n=60) included patients who received acupuncture in addition to medication and physical therapy, while the control group (n=60) included patients who received only medication and physical therapy. Scores for the Asthma Control Test (ACT), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) and Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQOLQ) were evaluated immediately and two weeks after treatment completion, and compared between groups. The mean age of the patients was 46.4 years. Improvements in ACT, HADS and AQOLQ scores for the experimental group were evident 2 weeks after treatment initiation, and were significantly greater than the changes observed in the control group. Our findings suggest that acupuncture improves the quality of life of patients with asthma and eliminated cough, insomnia and anxiety.

Abdullah Al Madhani is a senior Psychiatry Resident at Oman Medical Specialty Board in Sultanate of Oman. He is also a registered doctor at Ministry of Health

in the Sultanate. His research interests are addiction and drug abuse. Recently, he has focused more on psychological interventions for people with alcohol and

drug abuse.

Background: It is indicated that Oman is witnessing an increase in issues pertinent to alcohol and drug abuse.

 

Aim: The aim of this study was to identify the characteristics of drug abusers attending detox hospitals in Oman and their pattern of health care services utilization.

 

Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care center for alcohol and drug abuse. The participants seeking consultation for alcohol and drug abusers were selected by the systematic random method. A six-part questionnaire was designed to solicit socio-demographic background and clinical data, healthcare utilization and its barriers.

 

Results: Among 293 alcohol and substance abusers, 99% were males. The most common age of onset for alcohol and drug problems was shown to be between the ages of 15 to 19 years old. Variables such as peer pressure were seen to be integral in leading to first exposure incidences with alcohol and drug problems. The majority of attendees were poly-drug abusers and many of them were making use of intravenous drugs. In a majority of cases, cannabis and alcohol were the first substances being consumed. Hepatitis C and psychiatric disorders were found to be common co-morbidities. Those dependent on cannabis and benzodiazepines were the most to perceive ‘improvement’ upon

receiving healthcare.

 

Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study that explored socio-demographic background, clinical data, health care utilization and its barriers and ‘improvement’ perception among alcohol and drug abusers attending drug detox units in Oman.

Alsalt Altoubi is a senior Psychiatry Resident at Oman Medical Specialty Board in Sultanate of Oman. He is also a registered doctor at Ministry of Health in the Sultanate. His research interests are child Psychiatry disorders and stress programs for healthy individuals and people with mental Disorders as well social psychiatry. Recently, he has focused more on psychological interventions for people with depression.

Background: There is a dearth of studies that have explored cognitive performance in different grades of spirit possession.

 

Aim: This study was undertaken to investigate two areas: the first was to explore whether there is a difference in demographic characteristics among presently defined grades of spirit possession in Oman: Total Possession (TP),

Partial Possession (PP) and Symbiotic Possession (SP) seen in the Omani society. The second was to compare cognitive performance among the different grades of possession. Assessment criteria for these three groups included indices of current nonverbal reasoning ability, attention /concentration and recall, and those measures calling upon executive functioning.

 

Results: In terms of socio-demographic characteristics, being female, having low education and being in a particular age-group are strongly associated with participants classified as TP. In contrast, the SP group endorsed more history of trauma. The three groups showed performance variation in current nonverbal reasoning ability, attention / concentration and recall, and executive functioning, with TP appearing to have poorer performance on these measures compared to PP and SP.

 

Conclusion: Previous studies have investigated whether spirit possession is a pathological state or a culture-specific idiom of distress. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has examined performances in cognitive measures

among different types of possession. The entrance of possession trance disorder and dissociative trance disorder into the psychiatric nomenclature warrants more studies of this nature.