The healthcare-seeking behaviour of schizophrenic patients in Cambodia.

Aims: To understand the patterns of the schizophrenic patients' healthcare-seeking behaviour (HCSB) in the context of a post-conflict country where psychiatric facilities are scarce.

Methods: Cross-sectional survey assessing schizophrenic patients and their caregivers who consulted for the first time in four different outpatient psychiatric departments.

Results: One hundred and four schizophrenic patients were selected: 56.

[Impact of personality on the alcohol withdrawal syndrome intensity: a preliminary study with the Cloninger's model].

Introduction: The personality of alcohol dependant patients as a factor influencing the intensity of the alcohol withdrawal syndrome has been seldom examined. Cloninger's biosocial model of personality describes four temperaments (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persistence) which, except for persistence, are admittedly linked to specific central neurotransmitters, and three characters. Novelty seeking is linked with low levels of mesencephalic dopamine, harm avoidance with high levels of serotonin in the septo-hippocampic system and reward dependence with low levels of noradrenaline in the ascending pathways from the locus coeruleus to the limbic system.

[A case of myasthenia gravis diagnosed as conversion disorder].

Conversion disorder is a difficult diagnosis. The patients' psychiatric backgrounds and the complexity of the diagnosis of some neurologic diseases are the main reasons for diagnostic errors. Based on one observation, the diagnostic criteria and the differential diagnosis of conversion disorder are addressed.