There is no doubt that nutritional status can have significant and sometimes profound effects on human mental performance (Table 1). This is evidenced by, for example, the consequences of chronic and severe food restriction (Smart, 1993), thiamin deficiency (Kanarek & Marks-Kaufman, 1991), and Fe deficiency (Pollitt, 1987). Acute effects of food and fluid ingestion have also been described, and...

BACKGROUND Homocystinuria is a rare metabolic disorder characterized by excess homocysteine in the urine. Vitamin B12 deficiency has diverse cutaneous, nervous and ophthalmic manifestations. OBJECTIVE To report a case of homocystinuria masquerading as vitamin B 12 deficiency. CASE We hereby are presenting an interesting case of a 4 year old boy who was being treated for Vitamin B 12 deficie...

Can you easily form mental pictures from the descriptions of scenery that are so frequently met with in novels and books of travel? More than 100 years ago Francis Galton [1] sent out a list of questions, including this one, to gather statistics on the character of mental imagery. Many people reported vivid mental imagery, but not the scientists on his list. “To my astonishment”, Galton reporte...

Sleep plays a vital role in an individual's mental, emotional, and physiological well-being. Not only does sleep deficiency lead to neurological and psychological disorders, but also the literature has explored the adverse effects of sleep deficiency on the cardiovascular system. Decreased quantity and quality of sleep have been linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, such as hyper...

Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) caused by thiamine deficiency is an acute neurological disorder. Clinically, the classic triad of WE consists of ophthalmoplegia, ataxia, and mental status changes. Thiamine deficiency is known to occur commonly in chronic alcoholic patients. Sometimes, it can occur in patients after gastrointestinal surgery and in those with malabsorption. In addition, patients u...

This text is an essential read for nursing students and healthcare professionals working in learning disability. It begins with the origins of learning disability nursing and an overview of the old 'mental deficiency colonies' in institutions.

Such a lead should provide enough incentive towards speeding up the initiation of new enterprises of the kind, but as the needs of mental defectives do not make the same appeal to the general public as that made by other groups, we feel it may be helpful in furthering the Minister's aim, to draw attention to the work already being done in this direction, as illustrated by information we have re...

Up to the present in this country there has not been a great deal of systematized work done along the lines of child guidance. On the medical side much attention has been paid to the problem of mental deficiency, but with this child guidance has little or nothing to do, except in so far as it may be necessary to recognize the mental defective who comes to the clinic and transfer him to the care...

From Part I of the Ministry of Health's Report for the year ended 31st December 1954, we learn that since the initiation of the National Health Service in 1948, the percentage of the total capital expenditure on Hospitals allocated to those providing for mental illness and mental deficiency was 16%; 53.2% was spent on general and 9% on children's hospitals with from 4.8% to 0.5% on all the othe...