7,790 research outputs found
Attitudes towards mental illness in Malawi: a cross-sectional survey
<p><b>Background:</b> Stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness are strongly linked to suffering, disability and poverty. In order to protect the rights of those with mental disorders and to sensitively develop services, it is vital to gain a more accurate understanding of the frequency and nature of stigma against people with mental illness. Little research about this issue has been conducted in sub Saharan Africa. Our study aimed to describe levels of stigma in Malawi.</p>
<p><b>Method:</b> A cross-sectional survey of patients and relatives attending mental health and non-mental health related clinics in a general hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. Subjects were interviewed using an adapted version of the questionnaire developed for the World Psychiatric Association Program to Reduce Stigma and Discrimination Because of Schizophrenia.</p>
<p><b>Results:</b> 210 subjects participated in our study. Most attributed mental disorder to alcohol and illicit drug abuse (95%). This was closely followed by brain disease (92.8%), spirit possession (82.8%) and then psychological trauma (76.1%). There were some associations found between demographic variables and single question responses, however no consistent trends were observed in stigmatising beliefs. These results should be interpreted with caution and in the context of existing research. Contrary to the international literature, having direct personal experience of mental illness seemed to have no positive effect on stigmatising beliefs in our sample.</p>
<p><b>Conclusions:</b> Our study contributes to an emerging picture that individuals in sub Saharan Africa most commonly attribute mental illness to alcohol/ illicit drug use and spiritual causes. Our work adds weight to the argument that stigma towards mental illness is an important global health and human rights issue.</p>
Synchronous Behavior of Two Coupled Electronic Neurons
We report on experimental studies of synchronization phenomena in a pair of
analog electronic neurons (ENs). The ENs were designed to reproduce the
observed membrane voltage oscillations of isolated biological neurons from the
stomatogastric ganglion of the California spiny lobster Panulirus interruptus.
The ENs are simple analog circuits which integrate four dimensional
differential equations representing fast and slow subcellular mechanisms that
produce the characteristic regular/chaotic spiking-bursting behavior of these
cells. In this paper we study their dynamical behavior as we couple them in the
same configurations as we have done for their counterpart biological neurons.
The interconnections we use for these neural oscillators are both direct
electrical connections and excitatory and inhibitory chemical connections: each
realized by analog circuitry and suggested by biological examples. We provide
here quantitative evidence that the ENs and the biological neurons behave
similarly when coupled in the same manner. They each display well defined
bifurcations in their mutual synchronization and regularization. We report
briefly on an experiment on coupled biological neurons and four dimensional ENs
which provides further ground for testing the validity of our numerical and
electronic models of individual neural behavior. Our experiments as a whole
present interesting new examples of regularization and synchronization in
coupled nonlinear oscillators.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure
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Orientation and distribution of recent gullies in the southern hemisphere of Mars: observations from HRSC/MEX and MOC/MGS data
Abstract not available
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