Bangladesh is one of the densely populated countries of South East Asia with children up to the age of sixteen making up nearly half of the population. Like other least developed countries Bangladeshi children are subjected to a large diversity of conditions which may have negative effect on their physical and psychological well-being like poverty, malnutrition, poor living conditions, infectious diseases and illiteracy. There are positive factors in the cultural background, family bondage, caring parents and other members of the extended families and good relationship with siblings and cousins. Globally one in every five children and adolescent suffer from a mental disorder and two out of five who require mental health services do not receive them. It is expected that by 2020 childhood neuropsychiatric disorder will rise to over 50% and will become one of five most common reasons of morbidity, mortality and disability among children. 1 Behavioral problems can occur in children with all ages and very often they start in early life. Many risk factors have been proposed for the occurrence of mental disorders, among which social factors are clearly implicated in the

Stigma toward schizophrenia is an important area of research as it is frequently a barrier to early intervention. This study attempted to identify factors underlying stigma in Japan. Because even adolescents can develop schizophrenia, 357 Japanese parents of high school students were enrolled. All parents lived outside the areas affected by the Tohoku earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011 (ie, parts of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures). Factor analysis using the Link Devaluation–Discrimination Measure identified two factors: comparison with an able-bodied person and non-comparison with an able-bodied person. Regression analysis revealed that family structure had independent effects on factor 2 (p <0.05), and ANOVA showed that education had independent effects on factor 2 (p <0.05). These results suggest that education programs that seek to counteract stigma should target curricula in high schools and vocational schools.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the association between cognition and hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorder in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Cognition is more or less compromised in schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder and alcohol use might aggravate this phenomenon. The study population included 3362 individuals from Finland with diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Hazardous drinking was screened with the AUDIT-C (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for Consumption) screening tool. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) diagnoses were obtained from national registrar data. Participants performed two computerized tasks from the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery (CANTAB) on a tablet computer: The Five-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task (5-CSRTT) or the reaction time (RT) test and the Paired Associative Learning (PAL) test. The association between alcohol use and the RT and PAL tests was analyzed with log-linear regression and logistic regression, respectively. After adjustment for age, education, housing status, and the age at which the respondents had their first psychotic episodes, hazardous drinking was associated with a lower median RT in females and less variable RT in males, while AUD was associated with a poorer PAL test performance in terms of the total errors adjusted scores (TEASs) in females. Our findings of positive associations between alcohol and cognition in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder are unique.