[Adolescence depressions]. / Les dépressions de l'adolescence.

This article considers the depressive problematics emerging during adolescence in the frame of the transformations that characterize this period of life, with a focus on the interference of socio-cultural dimensions. Several clinical features can be distinguished through the greadient anxiety/depression, depressive feelings/psychosomatic symptoms, depressive expressions/self-defeating conducts. The suicidal risk during adolescence and its links with depressive troubles is considered. A global multidisciplinary approach is recommended.

[Health behaviors among first degree students at the Free University of Brussels]. / Les comportements de santé des étudiants de première candidature de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles.

For several years, quality of life is used as a measure of health status. As university constitues a specific setting for young adults, the Health Service of the french-speaking Free University of Brussels initiated a survey in order to study health behaviours of students from the first grade. During the academic year 1998-99, 3,185 students were surveyed in the first degree, using an anonymous self-completed questionnaire with the following topics: health perception, weight, social support, emotional well-being, tobacco, alcohol, medicines, cannabis and ecstasy use as well as access to general practitioner. Body Mass Index was computed and emotional well-being was approached using CES-D scale. Results are presented by gender and faculty. Mutivariate analysis was also realised using logistic regression. In general, results confirm the data resulting from other studies in general population as well as at school. Nevertheless, results show that health is a problem for a minority of students and is a "whole" that has to be approached globally. Moreover, data give a basis to define priorities and strategies to improve students' physical and mental well-being at university. Results are also useful to better target these actions to those at needs.

[Integrated care of HIV-seropositive patients: liaison psychiatry revisited]. / La prise en charge intégrée des patients séropositifs pour le virus HIV: la psychiatrie de liaison revisitée.

Psychiatric, psychologic and psychotherapeutic care of HIV patients is integrated inside a specific medical institution. The psychological representations that AIDS mobilizes pervade the intense medical relationship between internists, nurses and the HIV patients. This relationship becomes the central node for the differentiation of psychologists and psychiatrists function inside the team. We propose here three different functions: the bio-psycho-social integrated care of the patients; the "binding" of psychical representatives inside the HIV patient who is in a death process; the binding of the representatives disseminated inside the medical team by the patient.

[Psychiatric intervention in a medical hospitalization unit admitting HIV positive patients]. / Psychiatrie de liaison dans une unité d'hospitalisation médicale accueillant des patients VIH positifs.

Description of the intervention of psychiatrists with HIV positive hospitalized patients. An analysis of 26 cases over a six-months period. Attention is drawn on the following characteristics: 1) limited extend of the psychiatrist's intervention when the medical team is organized as to allow the patient's psychological support (psychologists participating to the "staff", supervision by an independent psychiatrist); 2) specificity of the psychiatrist's intervention in such a context, which relate to: a) the differential diagnosis between psycho-organic syndromes and major emotional disorders, b) in difficult cases, the definition of the therapeutical scope; 3) necessary search for a more adapted support of male patients admitted for psychosocial reasons and especially for addicted patients.

[The role of methadone in the treatment of opiate addicts: current findings in the literature]. / Place de la méthadone dans le traitement des toxicomanies aux opiacés: données actuelles de la littérature.

We discuss the use of Methadone in the treatment of opiate addiction. Withdrawal and maintenance treatment should be considered separately. Only the latter remains controversial. Various programs exist, mainly in the USA, and the study of their characteristics could enable us to define more precisely their respective indication criteria. The integration of specific and non-concurrent maintenance programs in a diversified but coordinated health care organization for drug addicts appears as the more appropriate and realistic measure in our country. Considering the extension of HIV-infection among this population, it becomes an urgency.

Filiation and secrecy in artificial insemination with donor.

Artificial insemination with donor (AID) forces the gynaecologist to face the problem of filiation with his patients. Here, the authors point out the pathogenic effect, both on the parents and the child, which may result from rigidly kept secret about 'AID filiation', and they discuss some conditions which could help to avoid this pathogenic effect, possibly allowing a non-traumatic revelation of his/her filiation to the child, in the future.

[The concept of masochism]. / Situation du masochisme.

The terms masochism and masochistic behaviour are clinically used for acceptations extending well beyond the relatively well-defined limits of sexual perversion. If it is indeed rather unusual to see a masochist pervert identified as such among psychiatric hospital or ambulatory patients, yet you very often find in a medical record the term masochist applied to a patient without there being any question of his sexual habits. This enlargement of the concept masochism has its roots in the works of Freud who introduces, next to the masochist perversion, notions of feminine and moral masochism. The aim of this paper is to re-situate in the light of psycho-analytic theory, the specificity of the various masochistic formulas in order to render them their semiologistic value, more particularly in connection with the therapeutic indications involved.

[Certain reflections of a child psychiatrist on school failure]. / Quelques réflexions d'un pédopsychiatre sur l'échec scolaire.

School failure is an important phenomenon about which not only the teachers are very much concerned, but also the sociologists and the political authorities. As it is the main reason why people consult them, child psychiatrists, psychologists and professionals in mental health are led to consider, beside the specific psychopathological factors, the socio-cultural and pedagogical aspects involved in different ways everytime a child meets difficulties at school. The programs of intervention resulting from this dynamic approach raise the question of the limits of the psychiatrists' competence and practice. The cooperation with the school in particular should take into account the risks arising from any confusion between therapeutic and pedagogic responsibilities. Finally, serious school failure leads us to question how special education works, when considering inadaptation only as a consequence of deficits. We should compare the advantages of such a system in connection with the possibilities-still to be imagined- of integration through the channel of ordinary school teaching.

[Schizophrenia and treatment with lithium salts. Current data from the literature]. / Schizophrénies et traitement par les sels de lithium. Données actuelles de la littérature.

The use of lithium salts in the treatment of schizophrenia remains as contested as the concept of schizo-affective disorders. Many studies have attempted to define the interest and the risks of lithiotherapy beside the major effective disorders. Only a few of them can be credited with a strict methodology. The authors have only taken into account the comparative double-blind studies, namely between lithium and neuroleptics. Some predictive criteria of the therapeutic effect seem to emerge: the notion of a sudden outbreak, a good premorbid adjustment, appear more significant than the presence or absence of effective symptoms during the psychotic episode.

[Depression in black Africa. Review of the literature]. / La dépression en Afrique noire. Revue de la littérature.

The first two chapters of the present review of literature about depression in Black Africa deal with epidemiological data and semiological items. The epidemiological approach rises up the same difficulties as those raised in similar researches carried out in Western Countries, and others linked with the sociological field being studied. We find in the clinical descriptions some basic symptoms classically described in the West. Yet, the expression of the depressive experience gives way to cultural persecutive interpretations, the meaning of which is treated in the third chapter.