Derya Guzel

Alterations of the hematologic cells in synthetic cannabinoid users

Functions, morphology, distributions, and index of the circulating cells are the most useful parameters that indicate various inflammatory and toxic conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical significance of these parameters in patients diagnosed with (synthetic) cannabis use disorder.

Sakarya Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Öğrencilerinde Uyku Kalitesi ve Etkileyen Faktörlerin Belirlenmesi

Amac: Bu calismada, tip fakultesi ogrencilerinin uyku kalitesinin belirlenmesi ve yasam kalitesinin uyku uzerine etkisinin arastirilmasi amaclanmistir. Gerec ve Yontemler: Kesitsel tipteki calismanin evrenini 2015-2016 egitim yilinda Sakarya Universitesi Tip Fakultesi’nde okuyan 318 ogrenci olusturmustur. Katilimcilara Pittsburgh Uyku Kalitesi Olcegi (PUKO) ve Kisa Form-36 Yasam Kalitesi Olcegi (SF-36 YKO) uygulanmistir. Olceklerin sosyodemogrofik ozelliklerle iliskileri de degerlendirilmistir. Analizlerde tanimlayici istatistikler, Kolmogorov-Smirnov normallik testi, Ki-kare Testi ve Spearman korelasyon katsayisi kullanilmistir. Bulgular: Calismaya katilanlarin yas ortalamasi 21,59±2,05 (en dusuk 18, en yuksek 30) olup, %57,9’unun kadin oldugu gorulmustur. Katilimcilarin 206’si (%64,8) evde kaldigini, 261’i (%82,1) sigara kullanmadigini, 260’i (%81,8) alkol kullanmadigini, 158’i (%49,7) kafeinli icecek-ilac tukettigini belirtmistir. PUKO’ye gore calismaya katilanlarin %64,2’sinde uyku kalitesi kotu bulunmustur. Uyku kalitesi puani ile ders notu ortalamasi arasinda negatif yonlu zayif bir iliski bulunmustur. Kafeinli icecek tuketenlerin uyku kalitesinin, kafeinli icecek tuketmeyenlere gore istatistiksel olarak daha kotu oldugu gorulmustur. YKO alt basliklarina gore calismaya katilanlarin aldiklari puanlarin ortancasi en yuksek fiziksel rol fonksiyon alaninda, en dusuk duygusal rol fonksiyon alaninda oldugu gorulmustur (sirasiyla ortanca degerler: 100,0-33,33) . Uyku kalitesi olcegi puani ile Yasam kalitesinin tum alt basliklari arasinda negatif yonlu orta ya da zayif iliski oldugu gorulmustur. Sinif ile genel saglik algisi, sosyal fonksiyon ve duygusal rol fonksiyon arasinda pozitif yonlu zayif iliski saptanmistir. Sonuc: Calismamizda uyku kalitesi seviyesinin dusuk oldugu saptanmistir. Tip fakultesi ogrencilerinin yasam kalitesi acisindan duygusal ve sosyal alanda daha eksik olduklari gorulmustur. Ogrencilerin kafein tuketimini sinirlamak faydali olabilir. Egitim surecinde ogrencilere hizmet veren psikolojik danisma ve rehberlik alanlarinin olmasi, sosyal aktivite duzeyini artirici faaliyetlerin duzenlenmesi faydali olabilir.

Outstanding Awards Brief Reports

Objective: Smith and Burger developed the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS) in 1997 as a self-report measure for malingering of psychiatric symptoms. The SIMS consists of 75 dichotomous (True–False) items that form into five subscales Psychosis (P), Neurologic Impairment (NI), Affective Disorder (AF), Amnestic Disorders (AM), Low Intelligence (LI), with each subscale containing 15 items. In this study, we aimed to examine the reliability, validity, and factor structure of the SIMS in a Turkish forensic psychiatry sample. Methods: A sample of 103 forensic patients (9 female, 94 male), aged 18–75, undergoing an inpatient forensic evaluations for competency assessment for criminal responsibility were recruited from a large forensic hospital in Turkey. The study protocol was approved by the local ethics committee. Socio-demographic information of the participants was collected and the SIMS, Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test (M-FAST), the Scales of Psychological Well-being, 36-Item Short Form Survey (SF-36), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) were administered. All statistical analyses were performed by using SPSS version 23.0 for Windows. Results: The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the Turkish SIMS were ranging from 0.42 to 0.87. The lowest alpha coefficient was observed for the Amnestic Disorders (0.46). For the whole scale, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was found to be 0.93. The test–retest (at after 1 week) correlation coefficients for Psychosis (P), Neurologic Impairment (NI), Affective Disorder (AF), Amnestic Disorders (AM), Low Intelligence (LI), and whole scale were found to be 0.97, 0.97, 0.95, 0.91, and 0.96, respectively. A positive and statistically significant correlation was found between the Turkish SIMS and BDI (r = 0.593, p < .01), BAI (r = 0.578, r < 0.01), M-FAST subscale Reported versus Observed Symptoms (r = 0.660, p <.01), M-FAST subscale Extreme Symptomatology (r = 0.686, p <.01), M-FAST subscale Rare Combinations (r = 0.729, p <.01), M-FAST subscale Unusual Hallucinations (r = 0.698, p <.01), M-FAST subscale Unusual Symptom Course (r = 0.568, p <.01), M-FAST subscale Negative Image (r = 0.514, p <.01), M-FAST subscale Suggestibility (r = 0.426, p <.01), and M-FAST Total (r = 0.794, p <.01) scores. Principal axis factor analyses with promax rotation were performed and four-factor solution that accounted for 39.87% of the variance observed. Conclusions: Our preliminary findings suggested that Turkish SIMS was a valid and reliable tool with a robust factorial structure for further use in detecting malingering of forensic psychiatric cases in Turkey.

Design and implementation of EEG signal based brain computer interface for eye blink detection

EEG (Electroencephalography) signals are used in different fields increasingly with the development of technology because they contain a lot of important information. In recent years, a great deal of these studies has been carried out about the concrete meaning of the signals. Most of these systems are called BBA (Brain Computer Interface) systems. Various applications have been developed with BBA systems. In this paper, a graphical user interface (GUI) has been designed on Matlab for the processing of recorded signals to detect blink with the help of Emotive EPOC +, which is a portable EEG device. Channel selection, filtering and averaging operations are performed by means of this software to determine the blinks. It is thought that this software will form the basis for higher level work on the Matlab platform.