Apathy and depression in cross-cultural survivors of traumatic brain injury.

The disturbance of motivation and its relationship to depression continues to spark contradictory findings among European and North American populations. Could a cross-cultural study shed some light on the situation? This study aims to detect the prevalence of apathy and to test whether the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES) can spot the presence or absence of depression in survivors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in Oman. Eighty subjects who sustained a TBI were given an Arabic version of the AES and were also interviewed with the semistructured Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI).

Editing and publishing of a medical journal. Success of an unconventional workflow.

Regional journals often face constraints that threaten their growth, calling for novel coping strategies. This paper outlines the problems and challenges in editing and publishing the SQU Journal for Scientific Research: Medical Sciences, the only peer-reviewed medical journal in the Sultanate of Oman. These included the absence of secretarial support and the consequent need to reduce paperwork, the fact that most papers required substantial editing even after peer review, and the lack of a single workflow for creating documents for the press and the Internet.

Profile of child and adolescent psychiatry in Oman.

Objective: To find the common behavioral problems in youth, their co-morbidity, treatment, and other variables in Oman.

Methods: All patients who attended the child psychiatric clinic in Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH), Muscat, (the only child psychiatry clinic in Sultanate of Oman) for a 3-month period were investigated for behavioral problems, particularly hyperactivity (by Conners' Questionnaire). The diagnosis was based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition.