Mental Disorders and Treatment

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder which affects a great number of children around the world while the etiology is largely unclear. A hypothesis that autism is an infantile post-trauma stress disorder (PTSD) was proposed in this article based on comparisons of symptoms between ASD and PTSD and the integration of findings on neural basis of autism and the Intense World Theory of autism. Attachment related trauma was considered as the main traumatic experience related with autism and specific neural basis which interacts with trauma in the development of autism was discussed. Based on the hypothesis, we insisted that restoring the attachment between the child with autism and the parents and re-establishing the sense of security and control in the child were the main goal of interventions for children with autism

Sleep is a vital physiological process with important restorative functions. The proportion of older people is increasing, and many of them experience sleep problems which increase the risk of accidents, falls, and chronic fatigue. The dual purposes of this study, which was conducted in two southern districts of Bangladesh, were to evaluate older people’s sleep problems and to investigate the relationship between this problem and socio-demographic characteristics. Data were collected from 280 older people via the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS-5). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze demographic and sleep problem data. One way classification of analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare different groups of older people with different socio-demographic characteristics. Almost all (87.9%) of the participants reported having severe sleep problems. Being widowed, being illiterate, living in a nuclear family, and having a low income were found to be significant factors associated with older people’s sleep problems. The identification of further factors that affect older people’s sleep problems is recommended to inform improved assessment of sleep problems and the development of prevention and treatment programs.

Objective: Pottery therapy is an art therapy technique, with effects having been reported by questionnaire analysis and case studies. However, it is not precisely clear what physiological changes are caused by pottery therapy. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of pottery therapy using heart rate variability analysis.

Methods: Participants for this study were 11 undergraduate students at Saga University in Japan who had a mental health problem. The pottery therapy consisted of a group session of up to 5 persons once a week. Each session took place for about 90 min. Heart rate variability (HRV) was measured for 5 minutes before and after the pottery therapy. Participants were divided into two groups: a therapy group and a control group. HRV was calculated for time and frequency domains using the check my heart software.

Results: In the pottery therapy group, the Poincaré plot parameters SD1, SD2, S, and RMSSD were significantly increased following therapy (p<0.05). There was no significant change of LF/HF between pre-test and post-test (p=0.374). In the control group, no parameters were significantly changed during a session without pottery therapy.

Conclusion: The new finding from this study is that pottery therapy is effective as demonstrated by Poincaré analysis.