What do medical students think about medical doctors with mental health issues?

Medical professionals tend to stigmatise people with mental issues. The study aimed to examine the attitude of medical students towards doctors with mental disorders. An anonymous online survey was created. Eleven psychiatric conditions were included and graded on a 0-4 scale to assess perceived security of working as a Medical Doctor (MD) with them. Based on the gradation the numeric variable called discriminative attitude was calculated. Five hundred answers were collected. The majority of the participants understood the need of consultancy by psychiatrist while suffering from mental disorders (70%). Students answered more harshly when assessing each of the eleven disorders separately, than for the general questions. There is a significant need for special anti-stigmatisation classes during university education.

Stimulation-induced side effects after deep brain stimulation - a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) was approved by Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, primary generalised or segmental dystonia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) treatment. The exact mechanism of DBS remains unclear which causes side effects. The aim of this review was to assess variables causing stimulation-induced chronic psychiatric/personality-changing side effects. METHODS: The analysis of scientific database (PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE) was conducted. The included articles had to be research study or case report and DBS to be conducted in therapeutic purposes. The researches with mental disorders in patients' medical histories were excluded. RESULTS: Seventeen articles were used in the review. In the group of movement disorders the characteristic of side effects was strongly related to the placement of the electrode implantation. Tiredness/fatigue was correlated with DBS in thalamus. Implantations in subthalamic nucleus were mostly followed by affective side effects such as depression or suicide. The higher voltage of electrode was connected with more severe depression after implantation. The analysis of affective disorder contained only three articles - two about OCD and one about depression. Forgetfulness and word-finding problems as activities connected with cognition may be an inevitable side effect if obsessive thoughts are to be inhibited. CONCLUSION: DBS of subthalamic nucleus should be seen as the most hazardous place of implantation. As a result there is a strong need of 'gold standards' based on the connectivity research and closer cooperation of scientists and clinicians.

Virtual reality in the diagnostics and therapy of neurological diseases.

Introduction: The use of Virtual Reality (VR) in neurology mainly concerns motor solutions. Such an approach is cost-effective and resource-effective. The aim of this work is to review and assess the effectiveness of proposed VR systems in order to diagnose and rehabilitate neurological patients with cognitive disorders.Areas covered: The existing analog neuropsychological tests lack ecological validity. The literature review revealed that VR solutions' biggest advantage is the possibility of assessing patients in everyday situations. Specific tasks (e.g. spatial, verbal, adaptive) could be focused on examining the exact types of memory disabilities in the heterogeneous group of cognitive impairments. There is a visible promise for further development in this area and a good basis for personalized and remote use. While different methodology is set in the analyzed articles the improvement in neurological functions is seen in all of them.Expert opinion: VR is still a relatively new and understudied solution, but there is a visible progress in its research. This trend could lead to more specific and tailored methods for therapy and diagnostics.