The Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire (later known as The Crown Crisp Experiential Index) was used on medical students of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. It was found that Year II medical students scored the highest; the female students scored higher than male students in all classes. The female students were more anxious, phobic, obsessional, hypochondriacal and depressive tha...

Despite widespread use and validation of their efficacy, about 40-60% of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) sufferers do not respond to appropriate courses of treatment with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI) and even with the combination of pharmacotherapy and cognitive behaviour therapy a substantial number of patients remain dramatically symptomatic. Recently, there has been increasing int...

Mr P. is a 38-year-old, single, unemployed, Caucasian man with a 23-year history of anorexia nervosa. Throughout his illness he has controlled his weight predominantly by restricting his calorie intake. He also shows obsessional features when eating; cutting food into very small pieces and showing deliberate slowness over chewing, swallowing and ®nishing meals. He exercises by walking briskly f...

The author investigated whether expressive writing enhances emotional adaptation to a stressful event (graduate entrance exams) by reducing event-related intrusive thoughts or by desensitizing people to such thoughts. Participants in the experimental group, who were instructed to write their deepest thoughts and feelings about the exam, exhibited a significant decline in depressive symptoms fro...

Carotid surgery has been shown to be beneficial in level one randomised trials. However, evidence suggests that current outcomes do not match those published in 1991. In order to make carotid endarterectomy safer in the future, it is essential to optimise patient selection and risk factor management and to maintain an obsessional approach to surgical technique. A planned strategy of monitoring ...

Cognitive theories of obsessions highlight appraisals of personal significance and thought suppression in the development and maintenance of intrusive thoughts. The current study examined the role of personal significance within the context of a thought suppression paradigm. The primary aim was to examine whether suppression would have differential effects for target thoughts appraised as perso...