Association of adult attachment with delays in accessing specialist care in women with ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE: Advanced stage at diagnosis and delayed presentation are common in ovarian cancer (OC). The objective of the current study was to explore the association of adult attachment pattern with delays in accessing specialist oncology care in patients with OC. METHODS: A cross-sectional structured interview study of patients with OC presenting to an Indian cancer center was undertaken. Consenting patients completed Experiences of Close Relationships-Relationship Style questionnaire (ECR-RS) and Medical Outcome Survey-Social Support Survey (MOS-SSS). Multivariate linear regression with "time to presentation to cancer specialist" as the dependent variable was undertaken. RESULTS: In all, 132 of 155 (85%) patients with OC who were invited were interviewed. An increased ECR-RS attachment anxiety score (P = .01) and being part of a multigenerational extended household (P = .04) were both independently associated with delay in presentation to a cancer specialist. There was no association between delay in presentation and social support. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with OC, adult attachment may contribute to delays in presentation. It may be important for the cancer symptom awareness efforts in primary care to include educating physicians on recognizing and interacting with patients with insecure attachment styles. The association of delays in presentation for women with OC living in multigenerational extended households needs more indepth exploration.Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07347332.2022.2025510 .

A Novel Technique for Detecting Depressive Disorder: A Speech Database-Based Approach.

Depression is the second most diagnosed disease in the world and is predicted to be the highest by the year 2030. Depressive disorder impacts both on mentally and physically, thus diagnosing this disorder in early stage is essential. Automatic Depression Detection (ADD) system via speech can greatly facilitate early-stage depression diagnosis. Development of such systems demands a standard balanced database. In this work, we present a novel labeled audio distress interview database. To our knowledge, this is the first depression database in Bengali language that contains audio responses from depressed and non-depressed subjects. Alongside this, we present a set of hand-crafted acoustic features that effectively detect depression mood using speech signals. Finally, we justify the quality of our developed database and the efficacy of the feature set in predicting depression using a baseline machine learning (ML) model. We believe that the annotated database will be a valuable resource for use by treating clinicians.Clinical Relevance-This research reports a new speech database in Bengali language for depression detection. This database can be used in healthcare by developing an automatic prediction model for depression detection.

Exploring 'Little-c' Creativity Through Eye-parameters.

Creativity can be divided into four factors, namely, mini c, little c, Pro C and Big C. Little c measures creativity required in doing daily activities which are essential for stable living. In this study little c is categorized into three levels of high, medium and low and its relationship with occulometric is studied to see if higher values obtained in the test also reflect in their eye movement patterns. Occulometric is studied using eye movement patterns such as fixations, saccades, and pupil diameter. Analysis by One way Anova shows differences in the three groups. It is found that high creativity group has higher number of fixations, low peak velocity, higher saccadic duration and larger mean pupil duration in comparison to its other counterparts. Clinical Relevance- Creativity is an important aspect of everyday living. Understanding this cognitive process through a bio-marker would help in validating a mental capability through eye parameters.

Preoperative risk factors associated with peri-operative psychiatric diagnosis in oral cancer patients.

Background: Head and neck cancers (HNCs) are one of the commonest cancers in low- and middle-income countries. There is a paucity of data on comorbid psychiatric problems associated with HNCs. The present study is aimed at reporting the pattern of psychiatric caseness in HNC patients who were referred to specialist psycho-oncology service and also investigate the predictors of psychiatric caseness in oral cancer patients. Methods: Case records of all patients with HNC referred to an integrated psycho-oncology service over 7 years (October 2011-December 2018) from a cancer hospital were analysed. All patients were assessed by a trained consultant psychiatrist and ICD-10 diagnoses were ascertained based on a clinical interview with the patients and family members. Associations of psychiatric caseness for consecutive oral cancer patients assessed by the psycho-oncology services over 2 years (January 2017-December 2018) were calculated by using univariate and multivariate statistical methods. Simple descriptive statistics of the referred patients were conducted, followed by logistic regression to find the associations of psychiatric caseness in oral cancer patients. Results: The psycho-oncology service assessed 771 HNC patients over 7 years. The commonest referrals were patients with oral cancer (75%, 558/771). For the years 2017-2018, 179 consecutive oral cancer patients were evaluated by the psycho-oncology service. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that being a woman (OR = 2.33; 95% CI = 1.02-5.32; p = 0.04); having worries about having pain in the post-operative period (OR = 2.55; 95% CI = 1.2-5.38; p = 0.01); worries about implications of the cancer and its treatment on the family (OR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.19-10.57; p = 0.02); and longer duration of hospital stay period (OR = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.003-1.16; p = 0.04) were independently associated with psychiatric caseness even after controlling for confounders. Discussion: Specialist psycho-oncology services are important in the management of oral cancer patients and in addressing the mental health needs of this very vulnerable group of patients. A combination of psychoeducation, pragmatic psychological interventions and medications were used to treat these patients.

Development of Objective Evidence in Rorschach Ink Blot Test: An Eye Tracking Study.

The Rorschach inkblot test (RIBT) is a standardized projective technique. It uses a subjective way of collecting and mapping responses of different regions like large (D) and small details (d). In this paper, eye tracking parameters like Initial Fixation Location, SF Ratio, Mean Fixation Duration and Mean Return are used to develop some objective measures which would be helpful in the assessment of the Rorschach responses. The study was conducted on 25 normal subjects who were administered RIBT cards I, II and X. The result shows an initial tendency to fixate in the central regions of the Rorschach cards. Computation of SF ratio helps in understanding most frequently fixated regions leading to popular response. Certain locations of each card have high attentional value where most shifts and fixations occur. The study supplements to the information obtained by the subjective scoring of RIBT and also indicates that specific eye tracking parameters could be an objective marker for personality assessment with RIBT.