Mohammadreza Shalbafan

Iran University of Medical Sciences · Psychiatry

Background: As 40-60% of the patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) do not adequately respond to the first-line treatment, finding an effective second-line treatment is required. Our aim was to assess the efficacy and safety of agomelatine (a selective melatonin receptor agonist and a 5-hydroxytryptamine (HT)2C antagonist) augmentation o...

Abstract Background Child maltreatment has been a major worldwide problem and has remained a persistent public health challenge in all countries. Physicians have a significant role in the prevention and intervention of child maltreatment. An educated physician that can effectively identify and report child maltreatment can fill one of the most sign...

Introduction Nearly 40% of patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have been found to experience cognitive impairment in at least one domain. Cognitive impairment associated with MDD is disproportionately represented in patients that have not fully returned to psychosocial functioning. As awareness regarding cognitive dysfunction in MDD patie...

Background Due to the growing prevalence of suicide, assessing people's attitudes toward suicide is necessary. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Predicaments Questionnaire (PQ), measuring social attitudes toward suicide. Methods This psychometrics study evaluated face validity, content...

Background: Borderline personality disorder is a major mental illness characterized by sustained relationship instability, impulsive behavior, and intense affects. Adherence is a complex behavior, from minor refusals to abandonment of treatment, which can be affected by various factors. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the factors...

Abstract Background Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by disturbing and unwanted thoughts as well as repetitive and time-consuming behaviors that interfere with performance. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has shown to have beneficial effects on reducing OCD symptoms as the first line of treatment. Moreover, Virtual Reality (VR)...

Background: For many people who work in the nursing profession, a large part of their work involves emotional (psychological) and physical stress. The work environment of psychiatric hospitals imposes a high level of stress to staff due to dealing with patients with psychiatric disorders. Moreover, there is a negative attitude in the society toward...

Objectives This study aims to investigate the attitude towards medication, medication adherence, and quality of life (QoL) in outpatients with neurotic disorders referred for the first time to the psychiatric clinic of Tehran Psychiatric Institute in Iran. Methods In this study, participants were adult outpatients with neurotic disorders referred t...

Background: Medications currently recommended for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) usually relieve the severity of symptoms by as much as 20-30%, and satisfactory treatment is obtained in 40-60% of patients with OCD. Nevertheless, the remaining symptoms continue to impair the patients' function. Therefore, it is necessary to in...

Objective: Clients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often engage in high-risk sexual behaviors. Online sexual platforms convey abusive and harmful themes, especially for this group of sexually impulsive patients. We hypothesized a correlation between their online sexual activities and the severity of BPD symptoms. Method: Fifty clients w...

Introduction Nearly 40% of patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have been found to experience cognitive impairment in at least one domain. Cognitive impairment associated with MDD is disproportionately represented in patients that have not fully returned to psychosocial functioning. As awareness regarding cognitive dysfunction in MDD patie...

Introduction: Stigmatizing attitude toward patients with severe mental disorders is one of the main obstacles of improving the mental health of societies. Media plays an important role in how the public views mental health issues. Thus, we have performed this study to investigate the Iranian theater artists' mental health status, and their view tow...

Background: Although various pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments are available for the chronic low back pain (CLBP), there is no consensus on the best optimal treatment for this condition. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of co-administration of pregabalin and agomelatine versus pregabalin with placebo to treat CLBP. Met...

Background: Literature has suggested that major depressive disorder (MDD) is accompanied by higher concentrations of inflammatory biomarkers, which could sabotage response to conventional treatments. Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of adalimumab adjunct to sertraline in adults with MDD and increased levels of systemic...

The Article Abstract is not available.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has captured the mental health discussion worldwide. Examining countries' representation in this discussion could prove instrumental in identifying potential gaps in terms of ensuring a truly global conversation in times of global crisis. Methods We collected mental health and COVID-19-related journal articles publ...

Introduction The stigma of mental illness has a negative impact on the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders. Considering the high prevalence of mental illness, the attitude of medical specialists toward mental disorders, who are front liners in diagnosing and treating these patients, is critical. Therefore, we examined the attitude of Iranian...

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 t...

Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychiatric trainees and early career psychiatrists in Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional survey, the authors used a 24-item questionnaire inquiring about the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, their views on the impact of the COVID-...

Grief is the physical or mental suffering experienced after a major loss, usually the death of a loved one. It is a universal experience, but sociocultural factors, such as cultural or ethnic identity and religious beliefs predict and shape the expression of grief. The circumstances under which people are experiencing grief during the coronavirus o...

Background: Child maltreatment or abuse has been a worldwide major problem and has remained a persistent public health challenge in all countries. Physicians have a significant role in the prevention and intervention of child maltreatment. An educated physician that can effectively identify and report child maltreatment, can fill one of the largest...

Background: Child maltreatment or abuse has been a worldwide major problem and has remained a persistent public health challenge in all countries. Physicians have a significant role in the prevention and intervention of child maltreatment. An educated physician that can effectively identify and report child maltreatment, can fill one of the largest...

Objectives The sudden COVID-19 crisis required a determined effort on the part of the healthcare workers (HCWs) and excessive workload increased the risk of depressive and anxious symptoms in frontliners. The aim of the study was to assess anxiety and depression levels among HCWs during times of pandemic and its potential aggravating factors. Mate...

Background Sildenafil citrate is a commonly used medication for the management of erectile dysfunction. Previous studies have described some neuropsychiatric side effects of this medication. So far, however, there has been little discussion about sildenafil-induced psychosis. Case presentation We here present the case of a 32-year-old Iranian male...

Objective We aimed to evaluate depression, anxiety and stress in university students of a large university in Tehran. Iranians witnessed an extraordinary combination of natural and man-made disasters last year; the last of which was the outbreak of COVID-19. Participants: 234 students from Iran University of Medical Sciences. Methods: We designed a...

Healthcare workers have faced an unprecedented workload in overstretched health facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we describe various initiatives to support them. Psychological, financial and peer support, accommodation and meal services, proper personal protective equipment, applause and gratitude in the community, spiritual and religio...

Introduction The importance of stigma toward patients with mental illness in medical students as future physicians cannot be overemphasized. There is currently no formal training to reduce stigma toward mental illness in medical students in their educational curriculums in Iran like most other low and middle income countries. Therefore, aiming to p...

Background Cilostazol, a phosphodiesterase-3 inhibitor, has been reported to improve depressive-like behavior in experimental studies of depression. We investigated the safety and efficacy of cilostazol combination therapy with sertraline in treating patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) in a 6-week, parallel, randomized controlled trial....

Background Medications currently recommended for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) usually decrease the severity of the symptoms by 20–30%; however, 40–60% of OCD patients do not achieve a satisfactory response. Our main objective was to investigate the effectiveness of memantine, a non-competitive N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) rec...

Suicide is the second leading cause of death between the ages of 15 and 29. Most suicides are related to mental illnesses. Suicide is considered a response to predicaments. Due to the growing prevalence of suicide, assessing people's attitudes toward suicide is necessary. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Per...

Wikipedia is one of the most important sources of information in cyberspace that can be edited by individuals. About 80% of internet users in developed countries use the Internet to search for mental health information, which generally includes symptoms, illnesses, and treatment. Existing studies report varying degrees of mental health quality of c...

Background Borderline personality disorder is a major mental illness characterized by a sustained relationship instability, impulsive behavior and intense affects. Adherence is a complex behavior, from minor refusals of treatment to inappropriate use of health services or even abandonment of treatment, which can be affected by various factors. Ther...

Background Borderline personality disorder is a major mental illness characterized by a sustained relationship instability, impulsive behavior and intense affects. Adherence is a complex behavior, from minor refusals of treatment to inappropriate use of health services or even abandonment of treatment, which can be affected by various factors. Ther...

Background: Borderline personality disorder is a major mental illness characterized by a sustained relationship instability, impulsive behavior and intense affects. Adherence is a complex behavior, from minor refusals of treatment to inappropriate use of health services or even abandonment of treatment, which can be affected by various factors. The...

Background Borderline personality disorder is a major mental illness characterized by sustained relationship instability, impulsive behavior, and intense affects. Adherence is a complex behavior, from minor refusals of treatment to abandonment of treatment, which can be affected by various factors. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate...

Background: Medications currently recommended for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) usually relieve the severity of symptoms by as much as 20–30%, and satisfactory treatment is obtained in 40–60% of patients with OCD. Nevertheless, the remaining symptoms continue to impair the patients’ function. Therefore, it is necessary to inv...

Objective: Recently, rational polypharmacy approaches have been proposed, regardless of the lower risk and cost of monotherapy. Considering monotherapy as first-line treatment and polypharmacy as rational treatment, a balanced attitude toward polypharmacy is recommended. However, the high prevalence of polypharmacy led the Japanese government to e...

Background Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is among the most disabling neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by the presence of repetitive intrusive thoughts, impulses, or images (obsessions) and/or ritualized mental or physical acts (compulsions). Serotonergic medications, particularly Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), are t...

Introduction Migration of medical professionals has been rapidly increasing in the past decades and it strongly affects origin and destination countries. Objectives We aimed to explore the extent and the reasons of migration among psychiatric trainees and early career psychiatrists in Iran. Methods Our semi-structured 61-items questionnaire inqui...

Introduction: Serotonergic system hyperactivity at 5-HT2A receptors on glutamate neurons in the cerebral cortex is one of the pathways that is theoretically linked to psychosis. In addition to neurotransmitter dysfunction, volumetric studies revealed loss of cortical gray matter and ventricular enlargement in patients with schizophrenia, although t...

Every health care system requires an adequate health care workforce, service delivery, financial support, and information technology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global health systems were ill prepared to address the rising prevalence of mental health problems, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), thereby increasing treatment g...

Purpose of the Study: Inflammatory processes in the brain play an important role in etiopathogenesis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Cyclooxygenase inhibitors such as celecoxib reduce the production of proinflammatory cytokines. This triple-blind study aimed to investigate the efficacy of the addition of Celecoxib to selective serotonin reu...

Background: Medications currently recommended for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) usually decrease the severity of the symptoms by 20–30%, and 40–60% of OCD patients do not achieve satisfactory treatment. In this study, the main objective was to investigate the effectiveness of memantine, which is a non-competitive N-Methyl-D-a...

Clozapine is recommended as first-line treatment for treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS). Despite its established position in all international guidelines, prescribing and utilization rates of clozapine have consistently been low among psychiatrists. The primary aim of the current study was to survey psychiatrists in the Middle East and North A...

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had an important effect on medical education. Universities around the world responded to the crisis by announcing the immediate closure and substituted the in-person sessions with online ones. Methods: Iran University of Medical Sciences designed a platform for medical students. To ma...

Objectives The global crisis of COVID-19 and its consequential strict public health measures placed around the world have impacted mental health. New scales and tools have been developed to measure these mental health effects. This narrative review assesses the psychometric properties of these scales and tools and methodological aspects of their de...

Medication adherence and attitudes toward psychiatric medication affect treatment outcome. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect and interaction of psychotic symptoms, sociodemographic factors, and attitudes concerning medication use with a three-month follow-up among methamphetamine-induced psychotic male patients. In this prospec...

Every health care system requires an adequate health care workforce, service delivery, financial support, and information technology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global health systems were ill prepared to address the rising prevalence of mental health problems, especially in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), thereby increasing treatment ga...

Aim Tipepidine, a synthetic, non‐opioid expectorant, has been shown to improve depressive‐like behavior in animal models of depression. In this study, we assessed the efficacy and tolerability of tipepidine combination therapy with citalopram in treatment of Major depressive disorder (MDD). Methods In a randomized, double‐blinded, placebo‐controll...

Introduction: This study aims to review recent scientific publications and research output in the field of psychiatry, from a series of countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, and Nepal), with a view to identify themes and similarities across regions, as well as to examine the barriers and challe...

Introduction Psychiatry's postgraduate training curriculum in Iran has been revised and one of the core revisions has been the incorporation of full‐time 9‐months of psychotherapy training. However, little is known about psychotherapy training in Iran. Methods An online anonymous survey was developed by the Early Career Psychiatrists (ECP) Section...

The collaborative effort of an international research team from the Early Career Psychiatrist section of the World Psychiatry Association has brought about an easy-to-use, quick and stepwise mental health care toolkit for the identification and appropriate referral of those in need of mental health care during the pandemic. This simple guide can be...

Background The rapid spread of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has forced most countries to take drastic public health measures, including the closure of most mental health outpatient services and some inpatient units. This has suddenly created the need to adapt and expand telepsychiatry care across the world. However, not all health care s...

Introduction: Bell`s palsy is a neurological condition manifests with acute unilateral neuropathy of 7th cranial nerve. The cause is not clear. However, some infections, immune system responses and ischemic causes are suggested as etiologies. We report 2 cases with Bell`s palsy while using quetiapine plus sertraline, in the absence of concurrent pr...

Objective This study is performed to examine the attitudes regarding marriage, family, and premarital sex among the students of different majors. Participants: Four hundred fifty-seven students from four majors studying Medical Sciences, Arts, Humanities, and Mathematics/Engineering within the age range of 18- to 24-year old. Method: Participants w...

Background Promoting drug-related knowledge and improving relevant attitudes among students are of crucial importance toward the prevention of drug misuse. Objective: This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of the “drug-related knowledge and attitude questionnaire” among Iranian medical students. Methods: The participants of this cr...