A rapid spreading of the COVID-19 virus in recent years had a great impact on every single aspect of live and the world faced with unexpected and unpredictable crisis in both physical and mental condition. As with any crisis, vulnerable individuals like pregnant women were the concern of societies. Several physiological and psychological changes occur during pregnancy which put individuals in a risk of mental health problems. During the outbreak of the COVID-19, pregnant women have experienced more psychological stresses, fear, anxiety, and depression. The prenatal mental distresses and psychiatric disorders may cause poor compliance, reduce help-seeking behaviors, and neglect to take the follow up screening visits and risk of harm for mother and others. Addressing the mental health in pregnant women is crucial to prevent the consequences. The purpose of this narrative review was to investigate the available literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in pregnant women and provide some recommendations to improve mental health in them. It also shed some light on providing mental health services for women during pregnancy and can be used by health professionals and policymakers.

IntroductionThe COVID-19 crisis created a lot of problems in people's lives. Different lifestyles, mental health, communication, rituals and traditions, particularly those involved in mourning, have changed drastically. Medical staff faced numerous critically ill patients every day. This greatly distressed the staff, especially the ICU staff. The end result was considerable amounts of mental distress for the medical staff who lost family members to COVID-19 making the distress even more complex.MethodsWe carried out this qualitative research to study the grief experiences of 12 Iranian ICU staff members at the Rasoul Akram Hospital who had experienced the loss of a family member to the COVID-19 pandemic. We studied the effects of how their own grief experience and how constant exposure to critically ill patients influenced their work with patients. All semi-structured interviews were held in the presence of a faculty member of the psychiatry department of Iran University of Medical Sciences. The interview on the grief experience among ICU staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, consists of 4 issues: Familiarity, Experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, Grieving the loss of a family member and Effects of parallel grief.ResultsWe found five common themes in the result of the experiences of the participants based on content analysis. These consisted of: complex grieving process, new experiences for coping with loss, more empathy for patients, change the meaning of death, and the need for support in work places. Likewise, there were 22 sub themes.ConclusionPaying attention to the details of staff members' life, gender differences, and cultural aspects can give us a better understanding and perception of their grief experiences. This understanding brings out valuable points which can help policy makers pass better laws for the wellbeing of society and people in order to promote leadership in turbulent times.

Background Epidemiological studies are necessary to develop diagnostic standards for mental disorders. Therefore, this study investigated the prevalence of anxiety disorders, and its correlation with different substances used by patients diagnosed with substance use disorder referred to the Iran Psychiatric Hospital located in Tehran, Iran. Two hundred ninety-two male patients aged 18–65 (Meanage = 36.11, SD = 10.55) were recruited according to the available participant pool. Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-V Axis I Disorders was used to investigate their simultaneous anxiety disorders, and then the correlations with the different substances used during the past year before our study were considered. Based on clinical evaluation and structured psychiatric interviews, we investigated panic disorder, agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. Results Results revealed that generalized anxiety disorder was the most common type of anxiety disorder among subjects of the current study. Further investigations revealed that panic disorder was significantly correlated with the abuse of cannabis (r = 0.116, p value = 0.047), tramadol (r = 0.205, p value < 0.001), and LSD (r = 0.197, p value = 0.001). Moreover, social anxiety disorder was correlated with cannabis (r = 0.124, p value = 0.035), opium (r = 0.186, p value = 0.001), methadone (r = 0.152, p value = 0.010), tramadol (r = 0.258, p value < 0.001), alcohol (r = 0.133, p value = 0.023), LSD (r = 0.123, p value = 0.036), and benzodiazepines (r = 0.168, p value = 0.004). The results indicated that none of the substances was correlated with generalized anxiety disorder as well as agoraphobia. However, agoraphobia had correlations with the intravenous injection as the main route of administration (r = 0.174, p value = 0.004). Conclusions Here this study supports the notion that co-occurrence of psychiatric disorders is relatively common and must be taken into consideration when assessing a patient and following up the treatment.

The most important practical concerns in addiction medicine are the non-substance addiction and related addictive behaviors among individuals with substance use disorder. On the other hand, technological advances, and easy access have increased the frequency of online sexual activities (OSAs) as one of these behaviors. This study aimed to compare the prevalence of OSAs, based on the Internet Sex Screening Test (ISST) scores, among 60 patients with substance use disorder referred to Iran Psychiatric Hospital and 60 non-dependent individuals. The results showed significant negative correlations between the ISST scores and age, age at the onset of substance use, and substance use duration. There was a significant difference between the ISST scores of the case and control groups (P = 0.001). Patients who start using substances at an early age and have a great duration of substance use are more likely to engage in other addictive behaviors such as OSAs. Therefore, it is critical to consider OSAs and other addictive behaviors in patients with substance use disorder to provide better care for this vulnerable community.

Background: Opioid agonist treatment, as the most effective treatment for opioid dependency, requires patient adherence for its effectiveness over the long run. Previous studies on psychiatric and non- psychiatric patients indicated that the patient`s temperament has had effect on their treatment compliance. Some studies on different types of addiction have attributed special temperament and character traits to these patients. Introduction: This study aims to investigate the impact of temperament and characteristics on opioid treatment compliance. In this study, the relationship between demographic variables, type of medication therapy, and temperament and characteristics scales of patients against opioid agonists therapy compliance was examined Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 150 patients who had initiated the course of opioid agonist maintenance therapy underwent TCI 125-item test and were followed-up for 2 months regarding compliance. The data were inputted into SPSS 24. K-S and Mann-Whitney U tests were employed to explore the relationship between quantitative and qualitative variables, while for examining the relationship between qualitative variables with each other, Chi-square test was utilized. The significance level in the tests was considered p<0.05. Result: The treatment compliance in this study was 67.2%. In patients who did not have treatment compliance, scores of novelty-seeking (16.7±7versus11.7±4, p<0.001), harm avoidance (16.5±5versus 11.8±5, p<0.0001), reward dependence (12.4±3 versus 10.2±3, p=0.005) and self-transcendence (10.6±2 versus 8.7±2 p=0.002) were higher, but in those who had suitable treatment compliance, scores of persistence (3.5±1 versus 2.3±1, p=0.004) and cooperativeness (17.6±3 versus14.8±4, p=0.004) were higher. Further, some temperament traits were different among patients undergoing treatment with buprenorphine versus methadone (scores of persistence, self-directedness and self-transcendence were higher in the group receiving buprenorphine, while scores of harm avoidance and cooperativeness were higher in the group under methadone treatment). There was also a significant relationship between gender (good compliance: female 100%, male 65%, poor compliance female 0%, male 35%; p=0.04), level of education (higher), as well as type of medication (buprenorphine) and treatment compliance. Conclusion: The results of this study can help to identify high-risk individuals for withdrawing opioid addiction. These people can be a target for pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to have their personality traits modified. Investigation of the effect of performing these interventions on treatment compliance can be a subject of future study in this area. Also while there are differences in personality characteristics among cultures, this study investigated Iranian culture more precisely.