Students’ Research: Tradition Ahead of Its Time

This view point describes the experience of introducing research at an undergraduate level during clinical rotation in psychiatry. Objective of this initiative was to encourage critical thinking, self directed learning and sensitization to mental health issues. This contributed to student learning besides galvanizing their interest in the subject. The opinion piece aims to expose various issues to students’ research in the context of medical education in Pakistan

Schizophrenia: a concept

Much of the current research-work into biological basis of mental disorders is predicted on implicit concept of disease that is less critical and sophisticated as it should be. It is remarkable, how the fundamental conceptual frame work of schizophrenia, as proposed by Professor Emil Kraepelin has stayed the same, since its inception almost 100-years ago. This review explores these issues besides highlighting alternative disease classification that suits behavioural neuroscience research

Generalized anxiety disorder: can we rest now?

Generalized anxiety disorder is a complex psychiatric syndrome. Current understanding on the epidemiological risk factors, genetic vulnerability and neurobiology of the GAD is beginning to unfold the complexities behind this disorder. This narrative review has attempted to put together the recent advances in the area of GAD research with intent to identify the gaps requiring further research

Mapping exercise of mental health research and researchers in Pakistan

OBJECTIVE: To systematically identify mental health research and researchers in Pakistan. Subsidiary objectives were to identify methodologies of studies published in the indexed journals along with their country wide mean impact factor. METHODS: A systematic search strategy using key words related to neuropsychiatry was carried out to identify various studies published in Indexed and Non-indexed databases. RESULTS: We identified 108 studies from Indexed data bases (77.8% Medline; 22.2% PsychInfo). Beside these, 51 studies were also identified from non-indexed databases. Among the indexed articles, 97 (89.8%) were Journal articles while 10 were other type of documents--there were 3 clinical trials of which only one was a randomized controlled trial. The mean Impact Factor (IF) of these studies was 2.75 (Range; 2.21-3.29). The median IF was 2.90. The most preferred journal for publication was the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association (JPMA; N = 33) followed by British Journal of Psychiatry (B J Psych; N = 11) and Journal of College of Physicians and Surgeons, Pakistan (JCPSP; N = 9). From the indexed and non-indexed publications we identified 43 researchers. Among these 34 (80%) were psychiatrists. CONCLUSION: The key finding of this mental health research mapping exercise is that mental health research output from Pakistan is low both in numbers and quality, with very few studies making it to high impact international journals. There is an urgent need to strengthen research capacity in areas of mental health at individual, organizational and macro-system levels