Stacey Singh

The uniqueness of Psychiatry as a medical speciality lies in the fact that aside from tackling what it considers as illnesses, it has perchance to comment on and tackle many issues of social relevance as well. Whether this is advisable or not is another matter; but such a process is inevitable due to the inherent nature of the branch and the problems it deals with. Moreover this is at the root of the polarization of psychiatry into opposing psychosocial and biological schools. This gets reflected in their visualization of scope, in definitions and in methodology as well. Whilst healthy criticism of one against the other school is necessary, there should be caution against hasty application of one's frame of reference to an approach that does not intend to follow, or conform to, one's methodology. This should be done within the referential framework of the school critically evaluated, with due consideration for its methods and concepts. Similarly, as at present, there is no evidence to prove one or the other of these approaches as better, aside from personal choice. We can say so even if there is a strong paradigm shift towards the biological at present. A renaissance of scientific psychoanalysis coupled with a perceptive neurobiology which can translate those insights into testable hypotheses holds the greatest promise for psychiatry in the future. This suggests the need for unification of diverse appearing approaches to get a more comprehensive and enlightened worldview. It requires a highly integrative capacity. Just as a physicist thinks simultaneously in terms of particles and waves, a psychiatrist must think of motives, emotions and desires in the same breath as neurobiology, genetics and psychopharmacology. However, the integration must be attempted without destroying the internal cohesiveness of the individual schools. This will give a fair chance for polarization in which a single proper approach in psychiatry could emerge, which may be a conglomerate of diverse appearing approaches of today, or one which supersedes the rest. A synthesis of cognitive psychology and neuroscience offers the greatest promise at present

Along with political, economic, ethical, rehabilitative and military dimensions, psychopathological sequelae of war and terrorism also deserve our attention. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre ( W.T.C.) in 2001 and the Gulf War of 1990-91 gave rise to a number of psychiatric disturbances in the population, both adult and children, mainly in the form of Post-traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD). Nearly 75,000 people suffered psychological problems in South Manhattan alone due to that one terrorist attack on the WTC in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. In Gulf War I, more that 1,00,000 US veterans reported a number of health problems on returning from war, whose claims the concerned government has denied in more than 90% cases. Extensive and comprehensive neurological damage to the brain of Gulf War I veterans has been reported by one study, as has damage to the basal ganglia in another, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in a third, possibly due to genetic mutations induced by exposure to biological and chemical agents, fumes from burning oil wells, landfills, mustard or other nerve gases. The recent Gulf War will no doubt give rise its own crop of PTSD and related disorders. In a cost-benefit analysis of the post Gulf War II scenario, the psychopathological effects of war and terrorism should become part of the social audit any civilized society engages in. Enlightened public opinion must become aware of the wider ramifications of war and terrorism so that appropriate action plans can be worked out

Plant biomass is a large source of fermentable sugars for the synthesis of bioproducts using engineered microbes. These sugars are stored as cell wall polymers, mainly cellulose and hemicellulose, and are embedded with lignin, which makes their enzymatic hydrolysis challenging. One of the strategies to reduce cell wall recalcitrance is the modification of lignin content and composition. Lignin is a phenolic polymer of methylated aromatic alcohols and its synthesis in tissues developing secondary cell walls is a significant sink for the consumption of the methyl donor S-adenosylmethionine. In this study, we demonstrate in Arabidopsis stems that targeted expression of AdoMet hydrolase in secondary cell wall synthesizing tissues reduces the AdoMet pool and impacts lignin content and composition. In particular, both NMR analysis and pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry of lignin in engineered biomass showed relative enrichment of non-methylated p-hydroxycinnamyl units and a reduction of dimethylated syringyl units. This indicates a lower degree of methylation compared to that in wild-type lignin. Quantification of cell wall-bound hydroxycinnamates revealed a reduction of ferulate in AdoMetase transgenic lines. Biomass from transgenic lines, in contrast to that in control plants, exhibits an enrichment of glucose content and a reduction in the degree of hemicellulose glucuronoxylan methylation. We also show that these modifications resulted in a reduction of cell wall recalcitrance, because sugar yield generated by enzymatic biomass saccharification was greater than that of wild-type plants. Considering that transgenic plants show no important diminution of biomass yields, and that heterologous expression of AdoMetase protein can be spatiotemporally optimized, this novel approach provides a valuable option for the improvement of lignocellulosic biomass feedstock.

Suicide is amongst the top ten causes of death for all age groups in most countries of the world. It is the second most important cause of death in the younger age group (15-19 yrs.) , second only to vehicular accidents. Attempted suicides are ten times the successful suicide figures, and 1-2% attempted suicides become successful suicides every year. Male sex, widowhood, single or divorced marital status, addiction to alcohol ordrugs, concomitant chronic physical or mental illness, past suicidal attempt, adverse life events, staying in lodging homes or staying alone, or in areas with a changing population, all these conditions predispose people to suicides. The key factor probably is social isolation. An important WHO Study established that out of a total of 6003 suicides, 98% had a psychiatric disorder. Hence mental health professionals have an important role to play in the prevention and management of suicide. Moreover, social disintegration also increases suicides, as was witnessed in the Baltic States following collapse of the Soviet Union. Hence, reducing social isolation, preventing social disintegration and treating mental disorders is the three pronged attack that must be the crux of any public health programme to reduce/prevent suicide. This requires an integrated effort on the part of mental health professionals (including crisis intervention and medication/psychotherapy), governmental measures to tackle poverty and unemployment, and social attempts to reorient value systems and prevent sudden disintegration of norms and mores. Suicide prevention and control is thus a movement which involves the state, professionals, NGOs, volunteers and an enlightened public. Further, the Global Burden of Diseases Study has projected a rise of more than 50% in mental disorders by the year 2020 (from 9.7% in 1990to 15% in 2020). And one third of this rise will be due to Major Depression. One of the prominent causes of preventable mortality is suicidal attempts made by patients of Major Depression. Therefore facilities to tackle this condition need to be set up globally on a warfooting by governments, NGOs and health care delivery systems, if morbidity and mortality of the world population has to be seriously controlled . The need, first of all, is to identify suicide prevention as public health policy, just as we think in terms of Malaria or Polio eradication, or have achieved smallpox eradication

Most clinicians and researchers are concerned with recent advances in psychiatry. This involves the danger whether something time-tested may get sidelined for extra-scientific reasons. That the pharmaceutical industry and super-specialist researcher may keep churning out new findings to impress audiences is only a partial truth. Research progresses by refutation and self-correction. Acceptance in science is always provisional; changing paradigms, frameworks of enquiry and raising new questions is integral to break through in scientific knowledge. Hence, there is in science a constant concern with the new. Moreover, the number of treatment non- responders to the time-tested swells with time, and researchers feel challenged to find ways and means of resolving their difficulties. Newer challenges need newer strategies. Obsession with the most recent can lead us astray, but a healthy evidence-based acceptance of the new is essential for advancement in psychiatric research. As indeed of research in all fields of medicine. And of science in general. The role of lithium and newer mood stabilizers in bipolar disorders are taken as examples to highlight this point

_The first part called the Preamble tackles: (a) the issues of silence and speech, and life and disease; (b) whether we need to know some or all of the truth, and how are exact science and philosophical reason related; (c) the phenomenon of Why, How, and What; (d) how are mind and brain related; (e) what is robust eclecticism, empirical/scientific enquiry, replicability/refutability, and the role of diagnosis and medical model in psychiatry; (f) bioethics and the four principles of beneficence, non-malfeasance, autonomy, and justice; (g) the four concepts of disease, illness, sickness, and disorder; how confusion is confounded by these concepts but clarity is imperative if we want to make sense out of them; and how psychiatry is an interim medical discipline. The second part called The Issues deals with: (a) the concepts of nature and nurture; the biological and the psychosocial; and psychiatric disease and brain pathophysiology; (b) biology, Freud and the reinvention of psychiatry; (c) critics of psychiatry, mind-body problem and paradigm shifts in psychiatry; (d) the biological, the psychoanalytic, the psychosocial and the cognitive; (e) the issues of clarity, reductionism, and integration; (f) what are the fool-proof criteria, which are false leads, and what is the need for questioning assumptions in psychiatry. The third part is called Psychiatric Disorder, Psychiatric Ethics, and Psychiatry Connected Disciplines. It includes topics like (a) psychiatric disorder, mental health, and mental phenomena; (b) issues in psychiatric ethics; (c) social psychiatry, liaison psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, forensic psychiatry, and neuropsychiatry. The fourth part is called Antipsychiatry, Blunting Creativity, etc. It includes topics like (a) antipsychiatry revisited; (b) basic arguments of antipsychiatry, Szasz, etc.; (c) psychiatric classification and value judgment; (d) conformity, labeling, and blunting creativity. The fifth part is called The Role of Philosophy, Religion, and Spirituality in Psychiatry. It includes topics like (a) relevance of philosophy to psychiatry; (b) psychiatry, religion, spirituality, and culture; (c) ancient Indian concepts and contemporary psychiatry; (d) Indian holism and Western reductionism; (e) science, humanism, and the nomothetic-idiographic orientation. The last part, called Final Goal, talks of the need for a grand unified theory. The whole discussion is put in the form of refutable points._

_In the light of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, this paper looks into some of the problems of contemporary man as an individual, a member of society, a citizen of his country, a component of this world, and of nature itself. Concepts like Science; Nature,;Matter; Mental Being; Mana-purusa; Prana-purusa; Citta-purusa; Nation-ego and Nation-soul; True and False Subjectivism; World-state and World-union; Religion of Humanism are the focus of this paper. Nature: Beneath the diversity and uniqueness of the different elements in Nature there is an essential unity that not only allows for this diversity but even supports it. Nature is both a benefactor and a force: a benefactor, because it acts to carry out the evolution of mankind; a force, because it also supplies the necessary energy and momentum to achieve it. Natural calamities: If mankind can quieten the tsunamis and cyclones and droughts and earthquakes that rage within, and behave with care and compassion towards Nature, not exploiting, denuding, or denigrating it, there is a strong possibility that Nature too will behave with equal care and compassion towards man and spare him the natural calamities than rend him asunder. Science: The limitation of science become obvious, according to Sri Aurobindo, when we realize that it has mastered knowledge of processes and helped in the creation of machinery but is ignorant of the foundations of being and, therefore, cannot perfect our nature or our life. Science and philosophy: The insights of philosophy could become heuristic and algorithmic models for scientific experimentation. Matter: An interesting aspect of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy is his acceptance of the reality of matter even while highlighting its inadequacies; the ultimate goal, according to him, is the divination of matter itself. Purusa: If the mana-purusa (mental being) were to log on to the genuine citta-purusa (psychic formation), without necessarily logging off from the prana-purusa (frontal formation), it may help quieten the turbulences within, which may be a prelude to the quietening of the disturbances without, whether it be physical maladies, cravings (for food, fame, fortune, etc.), destructive competitiveness; or wars, terrorism, ethnic conflicts, communal riots, and the other such social maladies that afflict mankind today. Nation-ego (false subjectivism) and Nation-soul (true subjectivism): Sri Aurobindo considers Nation-ego an example of false subjectivism, in which national identity and pride are stressed to prove one's superiority and suppress or exploit the rest. The Nation-soul, as an example of true subjectivism, attempts to capture one's traditional heritage and values in its pristine form, not as a reaction to hurts and angers or as compensation for real or imagined injuries or indignities of the past. World-state (false subjectivism) and World-union (true subjectivism): Similarly, a World-state founded upon the principle of centralization and uniformity, a mechanical and formal unity, is an example of false subjectivism, while a World-union founded upon the principle of liberty and variation in a free and intelligent unity is an example of true subjectivism Human actualization: Even if two human beings are similar, in so far as they are human beings, there is so much diversity between them. Part of the movement towards human self-actualization lies in the fact that this diversity should not be forcibly curbed, as also the realization that beneath all that appears disparate there is an essential unity. Also, man is not the end product of evolution but an intermediate stage between the animal and the divine. Moreover, he is endowed with consciousness that enables him to cooperate with the forces of evolution and speed up and telescope the next stage of evolution._

A lot of Indian research is replicative in nature. This is because originality is at a premium here and mediocrity is in great demand. But replication has its merit as well because it helps in corroboration. And that is the bedrock on which many a fancied scientific hypothesis or theory stands, or falls. However, to go from replicative to original research will involve a massive effort to restructure the Indian psyche and an all round effort from numerous quarters. The second part of this paper deals with the essence of scientific temper, which need not have any basic friendship, or animosity, with religion, faith, superstition and other such entities. A true scientist follows two cardinal rules. He is never unwilling to accept the worth of evidence, howsoever damning to the most favourite of his theories. Second, and perhaps more important, for want of evidence, he withholds comment. He says neither yes nor no. Where will Science ultimately lead Man is the third part of this essay. One argument is that the conflict between Man and Science will continue till either of them is exhausted or wiped out. The other believes that it is Science which has to be harnessed for Man and not Man used for Science. And with the numerous checks and balances in place, Science will remain an effective tool for man's progress. The essential value-neutrality of Science will have to be supplemented by the values that man has upheld for centuries as fundamental, and which religious thought and moral philosophy have continuously professed.