A Bibliometric Analysis of Dhat Syndrome

Sujita Kumar Kar,S M Yasir Arafat,Vikas Menon

doi:10.3390/psychiatryint2040029

Abstract

Dhat syndrome is a culture-bound syndrome, mostly prevailed in South East Asia that has been systematically defined approximately six decades ago. Assessment of the published literature would help to identify the research density as well as the gaps. We aim to do a bibliometric analysis of published global scientific literature on dhat syndrome. The Scopus database was systematically searched by using the keywords “Dhat syndrome”, “Semen loss syndrome”, “Semen loss anxiety” from inception to 11th August 2021. A total of 89 articles on dhat syndrome were found in the Scopus database. Most of the articles were from India and were published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry and Asian Journal of Psychiatry. The majority (>58%) of research on dhat syndrome was published in the last decade. The PGIMER (Chandigarh), AIIMS (New Delhi) & KGMU (Lucknow) are the leading institutes in dhat syndrome research. The year 2004 had the highest number of total citations (n = 135), while the year 1975 had the highest number of citations per article (60 citations per article). This bibliometric review identified that despite dhat syndrome is a common condition in the South East Asian countries, research on the condition is limited.

Highlights

Existing literature suggests that dhat syndrome is a common diagnosis in marital and sexual clinics, urology clinics, and dermatology & venerology clinics [2,3,4,5]
As the phenomenology of dhat syndrome has a close resemblance with depression and neurotic spectrum disorders and the diagnostic stability is poor over long-term follow-up, researchers questioned the distinctness of this diagnostic category and suggested that dhat syndrome is a mood disorder with culture-specific expression [1,10,11]
We aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the global scientific literature on dhat syndrome that has been published to date

Summary

Introduction

A total of 89 articles on dhat syndrome were found in the Scopus database. The majority (>58%) of research on dhat syndrome was published in the last decade. Patients of dhat syndrome often present with mood disturbances, somatic symptoms, and disturbances of general well-being, which are often attributed to loss of semen [6,7,8]. Cultural beliefs about the value of semen and the negative effects of semen loss are to blame for the substantial psychological anguish experienced by dhat syndrome patients. Comorbidities are common with patients with dhat syndrome. Sexual dysfunction like premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, anxiety, and depression are common comorbidities among patients with dhat syndrome [6,12,13]

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