Makihiko Suzuki

Demographic features of patients seeking cosmetic surgery.

The demographic features of 415 patients seeking cosmetic surgery were investigated from a psychiatric point of view. Of the 415 patients, 198 (47.7%) were found to have mental disorders according to ICD‐10 including: 17 with schizophrenia, 20 with other persistent delusional disorders, 33 with depressive episode, 47 with neurotic disorders, 42 with hypochondriacal disorder, five with paranoid personality disorder and 14 with histrionic personality disorder. The rate of subjects with poor social adjustment was 56.0%. It was noteworthy that such a considerable number of patients with mental disorders or with poor social adjustment had sought cosmetic surgery. Distinct gender differences were found: male subjects were characterized to have a greater number of mental disorders, especially dysmorphophobia (other persistent delusional disorders plus hypochondriacal disorder) and showed the narrow age range between teenage and young adult age when they were preoccupied with their ‘deformity’, and poor social function. A history of frequent operations was not considered to be an indicator for mental abnormality. The diagnostic issue in dysmorphophobia is briefly described.

Epidemiological study on sleep habits and insomnia of new outpatients visiting general hospitals in Japan

A large scale epidemiological survey of sleep habits, specifically for insominia, was conducted using 6277 new outpatients from 11 general hospitals in Japan. They were requested to answer a questionnaire newly designed for this study, which consisted of 34 questions concerning socio‐demographic characteristics, current medical conditions, sleep habits, current or past sleep complaints, symptoms of parasomnia, use of hypnotics/anxiolytics and other aspects of daily life. Insomnia was the focus of analysis using χ 2 statistics and, additionally, logistic regression to explore the predictors of insomnia. Bedtime was 23:30 and wake‐up time was 6:35 on average, with a mean sleep time of 6.77 h on weekdays. The number of subjects with current sleep complaints was 1276, of which 735 (11.7% of the total sample) had insomnia lasting for 1 month or more. Only 37.6% of those were taking hypnotics and/or anxiolytics. Old age, female sex, neurology, psychiatry, early bedtime, late wake‐up time, living alone and dissatisfication with the bedroom environment for sleep were found to be associated with long‐term insomnia. This study helps to provide a framework for further studies using the general population.

A comparative study of the psychological effects of DN-2327, a partial benzodiazepine agonist, and alprazolam

The effects of single oral doses of DN-2327 (DN, 2 mg or 3 mg), a newly developed partial benzodiazepine receptor agonist, and alprazolam (APZ, 0.8 mg), a full receptor agonist, on psychomotor function and short-term memory were assessed using three psychometric tests: letter cancellation, visual vigilance and Sternbergs memory scanning task. Twelve healthy male volunteers participated in this study. Randomized, double-blind, cross-over test sessions were conducted at 2-week intervals. Both 3 mg DN and 0.8 mg APZ increased the time to completion of the letter cancellation task at 3 h after administration, but neither had any effect on accuracy of response. In the visual vigilance task, which required relatively intense concentration and continuous attention, both the number of errors and reaction times to correct responses significantly increased from 1.5 to 3.5 h after administration of 3 mg DN and at 3.5 h after administration with 0.8 mg APZ. DN at 2 mg also significantly increased the number of errors from 1.5 to 3.5 h after administration, but it did not affect reaction times. In the memory scanning task, 3 mg DN, but not 2 mg DN or APZ, significantly increased overall reaction times at 2 h after administration. These performance deficits paralleled the time-course changes in serum concentrations of both drugs and appeared to be associated with the hypnotic-sedative effects of the drugs tested. These findings did not support those of previous preclinical studies of DN, indicating superiority of DN over conventional full benzodiazepine agonists/anxiolytics in terms of adverse behavioral consequences.

Survival analytic approach to long-term prescription of benzodiazepine hypnotics.

Eight hundred and sixty‐two patients who visited the department of neuropsychiatry and who were prescribed benzodiazepine (BZ) hypnotics were investigated to evaluate the actual state of their use, in terms of age, gender, diagnostic categories according to ICD‐9, duration of prescription and dose equivalent to diazepam prescribed. The frequency of prescriptions in subjects were surveyed using Kaplan–Meier survival analysis at every 3 months. Mean survival time to discontinuation was 8.5 months. A total of 60% of the subjects did not receive BZ hypnotics at the end of the third month, but 20% remained to be prescribed after 1 year. Moreover, 7.9% of the subjects were prescribed BZ hypnotics even after 3 years. The results indicated that 20% of patients who had started prescriptions for BZ hypnotics had the potential to induce dependence. The following variables were found in the long‐term prescription: male patients; aged patients over 60; and affective psychoses (which mainly consisted of depression) including neurotic depression, in the present study. A low dose was considered to be associated with an ability to be free from BZ hypnotics in an early period.

Prosodic features and evaluation of pitch controllable electrolarynx

The prosodic features and perceptual evaluation of an electrolarynx (EL) with pitch-control function were examined. We previously constructed a prototype electrolarynx of which F0 (hereafter “pitch”) can be adjusted by up-down or left-right thumb movement, and it was recently developed into a commercial product (Yourtone II, manufactured by DENCOM). Users can choose the pitch-fixed type with jitter (PF-EL) or the pitch-controllable type without jitter (PC-EL). One laryngectomized male speaker, who was an EL user and whose mother tongue was Japanese, served as the subject. He practiced controlling the pitch of PC-EL in Japanese (Tokyo dialect) for two weeks, and then his utterances when using PF-EL and PC-EL were recorded. Twenty normal listeners evaluated his EL speech tokens and were asked to rate on a visual analog scale how close the speech tokens were to normal speech. The results indicated that although the pitch range of PC-EL was narrower than that of normal speech and the production of Tokyo-diale...