Association of mood disorder and modifiable life-style risk factors in medical students: a cross-sectional study

Background: Bipolar disorder is one of the common chronic serious mental illness affecting 7 billion people in the world associated with significant morbidity which goes unrecognized. After extensive literature search, it was found that there is paucity of studies from the Indian setting that have addressed the issue of bipolar disorder.Methods: The present study was carried out to screen for bipolar disorder among medical undergraduate students and its correlates.  Due to non-availability of many studies from India, the proportion of 50% was taken as prevalence to calculate the sample size. With 95% confidence interval and 8% absolute error, a sample size of 126 was calculated using Epi Info. Study tools used were a semi structured questionnaire on socio-demographic profile of participants, Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) and Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ). MDQ is a self-reporting screening instrument for bipolar disorder having a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.83. Data was analyzed using chi-square test with p value <0.05 considered statistically significant.Results: The study included 87.3% males and 12.7% females with mean age 21.26±1.23 years. Out of 126 participants, 17 (13.5%) were screened positive for bipolar disorder. Factors found to have statistically significant association with bipolar disorder were number of siblings, type of family, migration status of family, living in hostel, body mass index and physical activity of the participant.  Conclusions: The results suggest that medical students constitute a vulnerable group and there are certain risk factors other than academic stressors which predispose a medical student to mental illness

Diverse Discussion in Public Deliberation on Cancer Drug Funding

Structured deliberations among members of the public are increasingly viewed as useful inputs to health policy decisions that also rely on scientific evidence and expertise. Such deliberations typically aim for discussions that explore a diversity of ideas and perspectives. However, the concept of a diverse discussion has not been thoroughly examined and methods for measuring the extent to which a discussion actually was diverse are lacking. In this article, we develop a theoretical account of diverse discussion and propose a method for operationalizing it, which we illustrate by means of an analysis of transcripts from public deliberations on cancer drug funding in Canada

Adherence to Recommended Anti- Rabies Vaccine Schedule: A Rabies Clinic Based Study

Background: Rabies, a fatal disease but preventable, requires proper management of the bite victim that includes post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) which is a multi-dose schedule extending to one month. Due to this long schedule patient adherence reduces and leads to associated mortality. The aim of the study was to assess the adherence of the animal bite victim to the ARV regimen.Methods: A cross-sectional retrospective record-based study was conducted in the Rabies Clinic, GTB Hospital Delhi. All animal bite victims seeking PEP at Rabies clinic were given a unique Anti-Rabies Clinic (ARC) number and classified according to WHO guidelines, using the ARC number the cases were selected randomly and the details of the cases were taken from the PEP-register from December 2016 to January 2017.Results: A total of 100 bite victims were assessed of which 73% were males. 43% of the victims completed their IDRV schedule of which 58.1% adhered to the schedule without any delays. Reported number of defaulters was 53. The age of the victim (p=0.037) and category of exposure (p=0.019) were found to have a statistically significant association with adherence to ARV regimen.Conclusion: The completeness of IDRV schedule despite of being essential is being neglected by animal bite victims. Need of the hour is to raise awareness and provide effective counselling to prevent defaulters and finally rabies