This is a report of a patient on multiple antipsychotic medications for the treatment of schizophrenia. Often, polypharmacy is not encouraged, however, with the advent of newer atypical antipsychotic agents, this practice may need review. This case will be used to highlight the rare instances when polypharmacy may be useful prior to the commencement of clozapine for the treatment of schizophrenia.
Introduction: Tobacco smoking kills and estimated six million lives annually worldwide of which include 10,000 Malaysian lives. Twenty three per cent of Malaysian adults smoke however, similar prevalence is not known among the mentally ill. Those with mental illness often have higher prevalence rates and greater disability due to smoking. This commentary aims to update the mental health community in Malaysia on the on-going efforts made locally to assist the national tobacco control agenda. Methods: A brief report of recent updates is provided for this article. Results and Conclusion: Three major significant activities are reported, all of which will move the tobacco control agenda within psychiatry forward. These activities will allow psychiatry be in a better position to align tobacco control activities for the mentally ill
together with the general population.
Objective: The aim of this study is to translate the original English version of List of Threatening Experiences (LTE) into Malay and to test the reliability on a group of medical students. Method: The LTE was translated into Malay and back-translated. The Malay LTE (LTE-M) was then tested on a total of 237 medical students. They were given LTE-M, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and English version of LTE. A week later, these students were again given the LTE-M. Results: The parallel and test-retest reliability were satisfactory for 7 out of the 12 event categories (Kappa=0.67- 0.88). However 3 event categories were not reported. There was no statistical significant difference in the BDI and GHQ scores between the students with and without threatening experiences. Conclusion: The parallel and test-retest reliability of the LTE-M were acceptable. An association between the threatening experiences and increased disorders was not established.