These are the first population-based estimates to demonstrate an association between hypertension and mental disorders in sub-Saharan Africa. Further investigation is needed into role of traumatic life events in the aetiology of hypertension as well as the temporality of the association between hypertension and mental disorders.

Elevated anxiety and eating-related obsessionality may increase the risk for the development of AN and for nonremission.

A range of studies have contributed to understanding the psychobiology of emotional regulation. Functional imaging studies have demonstrated that cortico-limbic circuitry plays an important role in mediating processes such as reappraisal and suppression. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may be important in conscious reframing, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex may be particularly important in emotion evaluation. Gene variants and early environments impact underlying emotional regulation and its neurobiology. It may be hypothesized that during interventions such as psychotherapy there are improvements in emotional regulation, together with the normalization of related psychobiological mechanisms.

In comparison with data from other countries, South Africa has lower rates of depression than the USA but higher rates than Nigeria. The findings are broadly consistent with previous findings in South Africa. These findings are the first step in documenting a level of need for care in a context of significant under-funding of mental health services and research in South Africa

The aim was to evaluate the efficacy of venlafaxine extended release (ER) on characteristics of resilience, measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Data were evaluated from a randomized, 6-month, international, multicenter study of adult outpatients with a primary diagnosis of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition PTSD for >or=6 months, and 17-item Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale score >or=60. Patients were assigned randomly to treatment with flexible-dose venlafaxine ER (37.5-300 mg/day) or placebo. Changes from baseline scores and effect sizes of response to treatment with venlafaxine ER compared with placebo were computed for each item, as well as for the newly developed 2-item and 10-item subscales. Effect sizes across items ranged from 0.41 (moderate) to 0.08 (very weak). The effect size for the Resilience Scale-2 (2-item subscale) was 0.32, which was comparable to the effect sizes of 0.35 for the 25-item full scale and 0.34 for the 10-item subscale. Venlafaxine ER improved resilience on individual Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale items that reflect four factors (hardiness, persistence/tenacity, social support, and faith in a benevolent or meaningful world), to varying degrees in patients with PTSD. The findings suggest that assessment of treatment response might be enhanced by routine evaluation of resilience.

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Conceptualizing eating disorders (EDs) as forming a coping mechanism against facing psychic pain, in this study, we examined the contribution of weight stabilization and ED behaviors to psychological outcomes of affective distress, defensiveness, and contact with inner/external reality among 2 subgroups of adolescent inpatients with (a) "restricting type" anorexia (AN-R) and (b) bingeing/purging type EDs (B/P). We administered Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003) and self-report measures at acute admission and on discharge. Data indicated that in both subgroups, stabilization of weight and disordered eating behaviors was accompanied by reduced explicit (self-reported) affective distress, yet by elevated implicit affective distress (D, SumShd). Subgroups' different Rorschach change trends indicated different dynamic processes in defensive style and contact with inner/external reality.

Background. Mental disorders are a major contributor to the burden of disease in all regions of the world. There are limited data on the epidemiology of major depressive disorder in South Africa. Methods. A nationally representative household survey was conducted between 2002 and 2004 using the World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) to establish a diagnosis of depression. The dataset analysed included 4 351 adult South Africans of all racial groups. Results. The prevalence of major depression was 9.7% for lifetime and 4.9% for the 12 months prior to the interview. The prevalence of depression was significantly higher among females than among males. The prevalence was also higher among those with a low level of education. Over 90% of all respondents with depression reported global role impairment. Conclusion. In comparison with data from other countries, South Africa has lower rates of depression than the USA but higher rates than Nigeria. The findings are broadly consistent with previous findings in South Africa. These findings are the first step in documenting a level of need for care in a context of significant under-funding of mental health services and research in South Africa.

RWTH participated in the shared translation task of the Fourth Workshop of Statistical Machine Translation (WMT 2009) with the German-English, French-English and Spanish-English pair in each translation direction. The submissions were generated using a phrase-based and a hierarchical statistical machine translation systems with appropriate morpho-syntactic enhancements. pos-based reorderings of the source language for the phrase-based systems and splitting of German compounds for both systems were applied. For some tasks, a system combination was used to generate a final hypothesis. An additional English hypothesis was produced by combining all three final systems for translation into English.

Despite the high prevalence of both mental disorders and HIV infection in much of sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about the occurrence of mental health disorders among HIV-infected individuals. We conducted a cross-sectional study among individuals enrolled into HIV care and treatment services near Cape Town, South Africa. Psychiatric diagnoses were measured using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) administered by trained research nurses. In addition, all participants were administered brief rating scales for depression (the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale [CES-D]), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), and alcohol dependence/abuse (the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test [AUDIT]). The median age among the 465 participants was 33 years and 75% were female; 48% were receiving antiretroviral therapy. Overall, the prevalence of depression, PTSD and alcohol dependence/abuse was 14% (n = 62), 5% (n = 24), and 7% (n = 35), respectively. In multivariate analysis, the prevalence of all disorders was significantly higher among individuals who spoke Afrikaans compared to Xhosa. While the AUDIT showed excellent sensitivity and specificity in detecting MINI-defined dependence/abuse (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve, 0.96), the HTQ and CES-D had lower performance characteristics in detecting PTSD (0.74) and depression (0.76), respectively. These data demonstrate high levels of depression, PTSD and alcohol dependence/abuse among HIV-infected individuals in this setting. Additional research is required to refine these rating scales for maximum applicability in cross-cultural populations. More generally, HIV care and treatment services represent an important venue to identify and manage individuals with common mental disorders in resource-limited settings.

The purpose of this study was to compare bulimia nervosa (BN) and substance use disorders (SUD) in cognitive-motivational terms. The cognitive orientation theory was used as a framework for testing the hypothesis that the commonality between BN and SUD consists of a similar motivational disposition for eating disorders, rather than for addiction, as was previously claimed. It was expected that BN and SUD patients would differ from controls but not from each other. The participants were 31 BN, 20 SUD, and 20 healthy controls. They were administered questionnaires for assessing anxiety, depression, addiction and the cognitive orientation for eating disorders. On most parameters BN and SUD scored higher than controls but did not differ from each other except in norm beliefs. Treatment of BN should consider the similarity of BN to SUD in the pathological tendency for eating disorders.