[Religiosity and mental health of adolescents and young adults: a review].

Religiosity could play an important role in the mental balance of young people, a significant portion of whom are characterized by insecurity and uncertainty about the present and the future. This article is a review of the literature on the relationship between religiosity and the mental health of adolescents and young adults. Religiosity - which includes the term spirituality - in adolescents and young adults has been shown to act as a potential protective factor against psychopathology like depression, anxiety, stress and drug use but also as an enhancer of normal psychological characteristics (e.

Are dexamethasone suppression test nonsuppression and thyroid dysfunction related to a family history of dementia in patients with major depression? An exploratory study.

Objective: Recent data suggest that the low thyroid function syndrome in depression is nonspecific. They also suggest that depression may constitute a risk factor for the development of dementia, especially in atypical patients who have high rates of hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis disorders. This study aimed to search for correlations among Dexamethasone Suppression Test (DST) cortisol levels, thyroid indices, and family history of dementia in patients with depression.

Psychophysiology and psychoacoustics of music: Perception of complex sound in normal subjects and psychiatric patients.

Perception of complex sound is a process carried out in everyday life situations and contributes in the way one perceives reality. Attempting to explain sound perception and how it affects human beings is complicated. Physics of simple sound can be described as a function of frequency, amplitude and phase.

Special characteristics affecting the neuropsychologic assessment of the elderly in Greece.

An important element in the diagnostic approach to psychogeriatric patients is the neuropsychologic assessment. Most instruments have been developed in the United States or the United Kingdom, but their appropriateness for culturally different populations is still an open question. Validation studies in Greece revealed certain difficulties both for the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Cambridge Cognitive Examination for the Elderly.

Arguments against the cognitive dysmetria hypothesis of schizophrenia.

Recently, the 'cognitive dysmetria' theory for schizophrenia has been formulated. According to this theory, a primary neurocognitive dysfunction is the core of schizophrenia and underlies symptom formation. The suggested perceptual fragmentation of external stimuli and inability to connect such perceptions with internal schemata is suggested to lead to positive symptoms, while defensive self-restriction and the exhaustion of the mental apparatus lead to negative symptomatology.