The relevance of creating a new combination drug for the treatment of cognitive disorders

The links between emotional intelligence and loss are under-researched, even though a lot of studies have investigated the psychological outcomes of traumatic experiences. Many people suffered multiple losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a loss of job, money, support services, or loved ones. The loss of a loved one might result in severe psychological trauma, and research suggests that early-life trauma relates to numerous forms of emotion dysregulation, including stress-reactivity. The consequences of loss for people with special needs deserve special attention since it often means not only the loss of a loved one but also the usual way of life. Thus, it is essential to analyze various aspects of loss experience, including the impact on emotional regulation, to reduce the harmful consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this research was to examine emotional intelligence in groups of those who have a recent experience of loss and those who have not and to establish the impact of the experience of loss on the human psyche and mental health. We have analyzed the results of a simple random sample of gymnasium students (n=362). We hypothesized that the recent loss of a loved one diminishes the ability to understand self and other focused emotions as well as situational emotions. The survey has revealed that respondents who experienced the loss of a loved one understood better how individuals felt in the presented situations than those who did not have such experience. The premise that people who have experienced the loss of a loved one have a lower understanding of emotions than their peers who did not have such an experience has not been confirmed.

In the conditions of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, the number of eye injuries and burns has significantly increased, which is the biggest problem of modern civilian and military medicine. The surface of the eye, constituting only 0.3 % of the total body surface, is extremely sensitive, and it accounts for more than 13 % of all injuries during hostilities. Occupational eye injuries in workers in the agricultural and metallurgical sectors also pose a significant threat. These injuries often lead to serious consequences, including loss of vision or a significant decrease in its functions. In addition, due to hostilities, the number of such injuries and burns has significantly increased, and the medical system is facing new challenges in the treatment of eye injuries. In such difficult circumstances, there is an urgent need to create new combined ophthalmic drugs for the treatment of injuries and burns of the organs of vision. Therefore, it is necessary to develop drugs with anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antifungal properties, since infections and inflammation that occur after injuries are one of the main complications that can significantly worsen the prognosis of treatment and lead to vision loss. Aim. Substantiation of the need to develop a new combined drug for ophthalmology that causes anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antifungal effects. Materials and methods. Data from sources of professional literature presented in international bibliographic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Chemical Abstracts) were used as the object of research. Methods of systematic analysis and information search were used. In the process of work, a bibliosemantic approach was used to analyze the relationship between key topics and areas of research, as well as methods of descriptive and generalized analysis. Results. The article analyzes the current state of the pharmaceutical market of ophthalmic drugs, antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral agents. The mechanism of action and features of the use of the main groups of drugs are considered in detail: antibiotics (chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, lomefloxacin, ofloxacin, tetracycline, gentamicin, tobramycin, erythromycin, moxifloxacin), sulfonamides (sulfatamide), antiseptics (miramistin) and anti-inflammatory drugs (glucocorticoids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). Conclusions. It was found that with a wide range of available drugs, their therapeutic effect often remains insufficient in complex eye injuries, especially those received during combat operations. Most of available drugs are aimed at treating standard inflammatory processes or certain types of infections, while complex combat injuries require greater pharmacological action and diverse therapy. The need to develop a new combined drug with simultaneous anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antifungal effects is substantiated. Such drug should provide an effect on several pathogenetic mechanisms, which will reduce the healing of eye tissues, reduce the risk of infectious complications and disability in victims of military operations and accidents in workers in the agricultural and metallurgical sectors.

Exposure to mass trauma may bring about increased sensitivity to new or ongoing stressors. It is unclear whether sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status may be affected by severe exposure to mass trauma. We examined whether the loss of loved ones or home due to a disaster is associated with more persistent disaster-related distress in ethnic minorities compared with Dutch natives in the Netherlands. In residents affected by a fireworks disaster ( N = 1029), we assessed disaster-related distress after 3 weeks, 18 months, and 4 years. The effects of loss of loved ones or home and ethnic minority/immigrant status on distress were analyzed using latent growth modeling. After controlling for age, gender, education, employment, and post-disaster stressful life events, the loss of loved ones was associated with more persistent disaster-related distress in ethnic minorities compared with natives at 18 months, and the loss of home was associated with more persistent disaster-related distress in ethnic minorities compared with natives between 18 months and 4 years. Our results suggest that the loss of loved ones may increase sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status during the early phase of adaptation to a disaster. Loss of home may lead to further resource loss and thereby increase sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status in the long term. Efforts to prevent stress-related psychopathology following mass trauma should specifically target ethnic minority groups, notably refugees and asylum seekers, who often experienced multiple losses of loved ones as well as their homes.

ObjectivesTo study short- and long-term effects of experiencing a disaster in repatriated injured survivors and the differential effect of injury, need for medical treatment, loss of loved ones and danger...

Late-Life Depression Research: Lessons Learned From the Metabolic Syndrome

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has created a public mental health crisis. Brief, valid electronic tools are required to evaluate mental health status, identify specific risk factors, and offer treatment when needed.ObjectiveTo determine the construct validity, reliability, and measurement invariance of a brief screening tool for mental health symptoms by sex, loss of loved ones, personal COVID-19 status, and psychological care-seeking during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the aim involved establishing a predictive pattern between the mental health variables.MethodA total sample of 27,320 Mexican participants, with a mean age of 32 years (SD = 12.24, range = 18–80), 67% women (n = 18,308), 23.10% with a loss of loved ones (n = 6,308), 18.3% with COVID-19 status (n = 5,005), and 18.40% seeking psychological care (n = 5,026), completed a questionnaire through a WebApp, containing socio-demographic data (sex, loss of loved ones, COVID-19 status, and psychological care-seeking) and the dimensions from the Posttraumatic Checklist, Depression-Generalized Anxiety Questionnaires, and Health Anxiety-Somatization scales. We used the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA: through maximum likelihood to continuous variable data, as an estimation method), the invariance measurement, and the structural equational modeling (SEM) to provide evidence of the construct validity of the scale and the valid path between variables. We analyzed the measurement invariance for each dimension by comparison groups to examine the extent to which the items showed comparable psychometric properties.FindingsThe tool included eight dimensions: four posttraumatic stress symptoms -intrusion, avoidance, hyperactivation, and numbing, as well as depression, generalized anxiety, health anxiety, and somatization The tool’s multidimensionality, was confirmed through the CFA and SEM. The participants’ characteristics made it possible to describe the measurement invariance of scales because of the participants’ attributes. Additionally, our findings indicated that women reported high generalized anxiety, hyperactivation, and depression. Those who lost loved ones reported elevated levels of intrusion and health anxiety symptoms. Participants who reported having COVID-19 presented with high levels of generalized anxiety symptoms. Those who sought psychological care reported high levels of generalized anxiety, intrusion, hyperactivation, and health anxiety symptoms. Our findings also show that intrusion was predicted by the avoidance dimension, while health anxiety was predicted by the intrusion dimension. Generalized anxiety was predicted by the health anxiety and hyperactivation dimensions, and hyperactivation was predicted by the depression one. Depression and somatization were predicted by the health anxiety dimension. Last, numbing was predicted by the depression and avoidance dimensions.Discussion and OutlookOur findings indicate that it was possible to validate the factor structure of posttraumatic stress symptoms and their relationship with depression, anxiety, and somatization, describing the specific bias as a function of sociodemographic COVID-19-related variables. We also describe the predictive pattern between the mental health variables. These mental health problems were identified in the community and primary health care scenarios through the CFA and the SEM, considering the PCL, depression, generalized anxiety, health anxiety, and somatization scales adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, future studies should describe the diagnosis of mental health disorders, assessing the cut-off points in the tool to discriminate between the presence and absence of conditions and mental health cut-off points. Community and primary care screening will lead to effective early interventions to reduce the mental health risks associated with the current pandemic.LimitationsFuture studies should follow up on the results of this study and assess consistency with diagnoses of mental health disorders and evaluate the effect of remote psychological help. Moreover, in the future, researchers should monitor the process and the time that has elapsed between the occurrence of traumatic events and the development of posttraumatic stress and other mental health risks through brief electronic measurement tools such as those used in this study.

Obesity is reaching the scale of a pandemic and is growing progressively every year. Taking into account the introduction of quarantine in many countries of the world associated with COVID-19, alarge number of patients are in a state of constant stress, hypodynamics, hypoxemia, which contributes to the prevalence of this nosology. Under such conditions, there is a need for a detailed analysis of the impact of stress and other factors on the pathogenetic links in the development of obesity, determines the relevance of our study and the need to find more effective preventive measures in the practice of family medicine.The objective: is to analyse the pathogenetic mechanisms of obesity under the influence of stress and other factors using systematic analysis of literature data.Materials and methods. A systematic review of literature sources in the field of obesity and its pathogenetic aspects was conducted by keywords: pathogenesis of obesity, overveight, stress, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system, orexin, serotonin for the period 2015–2020. The search was carried out mainly in PubMed and Cochrane databases. The bibliosemantic method and the method of systematic analysis were used.Results. According to the results of searches in the PubMed and Cochrane databases, 58131 sources were found by keywords, from which 29 most relevant research goals were selected, including: 16 systematic reviews, 2 meta-analyzes, 3 multicenter data and 8 cohort studies. It is established that despite the diversity of pathogenetic aspects of obesity, adipose tissue is an endocrine-active organ that changes the functional state of many organs and systems, leads to metabolic and hormonal changes, led primarily by disbalance of the hypothalamic region, which is responsible for somatoform and hormonal disorders, and for the body’s protective reactions on exposition of many orexogenic factors.Conclusion. A crucial point in the practice of a family doctor, which will help to effectively prevent the development of obesity and its noninfectious and infectious complications, is to study all possible risk factors, their complex interaction at all levels of pathogenetic changes. Taking into account the influence of stress factors on the hypothalamic region, which is one of the key links in the pathogenesis of metabolic and somatoform changes, will help to find more effective approaches to the correction of overweight.

Police officers exposed to potentially traumatic events (PTE) are at a heightened risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Little is known about trauma-focused psychotherapy outcomes in the police. In this naturalistic study, we evaluated whether PTE exposure and baseline clinical characteristics predicted PTSD symptom reduction during treatment and residual PTSD symptoms posttreatment. In consecutive referrals to a specialized mental health service for police officers (N = 665), PTSD was measured pre- and posttreatment using structured clinical interviews. Treatment consisted of brief eclectic psychotherapy for PTSD. We grouped PTE as follows: injury/maltreatment, loss (colleague or private), other job-related, other private traumatic events. Data were analyzed multivariably using structural equation modeling and logistic regression. Treatment effect size was large, d = 3.6, 95% CI [3.4, 3.8]. Police officers who reported more injury/maltreatment or private traumatic had more baseline PTSD symptoms as well as larger symptom reduction during treatment; police officers who reported more losses of loved ones showed smaller PTSD symptom reduction. Concentration problems persisted in 17.7% of police officers posttreatment, and these were predicted by baseline PTSD symptoms and loss of loved ones. Proportions of variance explained by the multivariable models ranged from 0.08 to 0.14. Our findings increase insight into the type of PTE and clinical characteristics of police officers with PTSD who benefit most from trauma-focused treatment. Because loss of loved ones can be presumed to have a profound impact on social and interpersonal functioning, a more specific treatment focus on grief processes may further enhance efficacy.

The authors examine the roles of social connectedness in mediating the relation between the loss of loved ones and life satisfaction in older residents living in a retirement community. Data were collected through a mail survey on a random sample of 734 older residents ( M age = 67 years, SD = 9.6 years) in a retirement community in the Southwest. Analyses were conducted using SPSS macros for estimating the indirect effects through multiple mediators. Participants who experienced the loss of loved ones in life reported statistically significantly higher life dissatisfaction scores than those who reported no such loss. The effects of loss on perceived life dissatisfaction were partially mediated by individual connectedness and satisfaction with received social support but not by support network size or collective connectedness. Interventions with older adults who experienced loss in life need to help alleviate their loneliness and increase their satisfaction with social support.

The purpose of the work is to analyze the psychological features of the condition and consequences for people who have experienced the loss of loved ones during a war. Methodology. Stressful situation leads to a violation of emotional regulation, which provokes acute reactions: crying, aggressive and steroid reactions, fear, motor excitement, nervous tremors, apathy. They are normal for such a situation, but do not always meet the understanding of others. The emotional reactions of a person experiencing stress and loss can develop sinusoidally – periods of excitement and activation will be replaced by periods of passivity and apathy. Their combination and dynamics of development are individual and in similar circumstances can be radically different in different victims. Interaction with the victims and relatives of the victims is always based on emotional, cognitive and behavioral characteristics of the period of acute grief. However, it is important to pay attention to the existence of this individual psychological characteristics of man, which significantly affect the development of its typical reactions, and therefore require an individual approach by a specialist. Individual psychological features are determined by the life story of a particular person, his type of response, length of stay in a stressful situation, the level of social support from family and friends, emotional closeness of the person with the deceased and many other factors. The scientific novelty is that the author analyzes the psychological consequences of experiencing the loss of loved ones in connection with the psychological characteristics of their condition during grief. Conclusions. Since the loss of a loved one, especially in war, is an acute stressful situation, the basis of such a choice takes into account the characteristics caused by such stress. Manifestation of these features can be observed in several areas: cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social. The mourner always has “comrades in misfortune” who are able to understand and share his condition, and this sometimes creates a significant emotional detachment. Violation of the meaning-making constructs of the individual, inner integrity, together with a heightened sense of the uniqueness of their own experience lead to the collapse of mental activity and disruption of social adaptation. In some cases, a person in the grieving stage has a phenomenology of post-traumatic stress disorder, which contains symptoms of invasion, avoidance, increased physiological excitability.

Emerging evidence suggests that the loss of loved ones under traumatic circumstances is highly prevalent among refugees and asylum seekers. We evaluated the effects of traumatic and multiple losses of family members and friends on psychopathology, disability, and quality of life in Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands, and investigated mediation of these effects through psychopathology. Respondents (N = 294) completed structured Arabic interviews. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The loss of a loved one was reported by 87.6% of the sample. Traumatic and multiple losses of family members independently predicted psychopathology, taking the effects of other traumatic events, postmigration stressors, and sociodemographic characteristics into account. Effects of traumatic and multiple losses on quality of life and disability were either partially or fully mediated by psychopathology. These findings highlight the need to evaluate and treat the effects of the loss of loved ones when working with asylum seekers and refugees as well as to incorporate grief-related psychopathology in diagnostic classifications.

Pharmacist Burnout: Recognition and Action Are Needed

This article attempts to answer the question of how the preparation of individuals with intellectual disabilities for the death of loved ones and the experience of grief after loss is handled. Based on an analysis of existing sources2 the author argues that in the 21st century, not all individuals with intellectual disabilities still receive adequate assistance when faced with the death of a loved one and support during the grieving process. The reasons for this situation are: (1) stigmatizing and stereotypical thinking rooted in the previous century, which leads to the underestimation of the cognitive and emotional abilities of individuals with intellectual disabilities; (2) the desire to excessively protect individuals with intellectual disabilities from difficult experiences; (3) a lack of appropriate knowledge and skills in the area of thanatology among caregivers of individuals with intellectual disabilities. The author of the text notes that the exclusion of this group from discussions about death has negative consequences for their psychophysical health. At the same time, she emphasizes the importance of including individuals with intellectual disabilities in topics related to death, appropriate preparation for the loss of loved ones, and adequate support after the loss. The general conclusion from the literature analysis is that there is a need for education in the area of thanatopedagogy and topics related to proper preparation for the death of loved ones and experiencing grief after loss for individuals with intellectual disabilities. This education should target those who interact daily with this social group, such as their caregivers, educators, assistants, social workers, and healthcare professionals. Their knowledge and appropriate thanatopedagogical competencies will lead to proper preparation and support for individuals with intellectual disabilities facing the loss of loved ones and grief after loss.

Cognitive Impairment in Dialysis Patients: Focus on the Blood Vessels?

Battling cancer of a spouse during a worldwide pandemic is a unique phenomenon. While the world experienced hardships such as stay‐at‐home orders, masking mandates, or the COVID‐19 infection, caregivers supported their loved ones who were diagnosed with terminal diseases. Racism compounded trauma as Black caregivers were not provided with the same level of respect and care for their loved ones during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Racial trauma is experienced by Black Americans, even during the pandemic and while grieving losses of loved ones. An autoethnographic approach draws upon my lived experience of racial trauma while caring for my dying husband during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This autoethnography informs the role of counselor education programs to prepare future counselors to support minoritized clients who may have suffered from systemic racism, while grieving the loss of loved ones, especially during the COVID‐19 pandemic, and which could also have contributed to racial trauma.