Yasser Ad-Dab'bagh

King Fahad Specialist Hospital · Mental Health

Objective This study aimed to utilize Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to investigate the constructive validity of the Arabic translation of the Vanderbilt Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) Diagnostic Scale (VADRS-A) using its two versions, the Arabic Vanderbilt ADHD Diagnostic Parent Rating Scal...

Objective The aim of this study is to examine, for the first time, the mental health literacy of the Saudi general population. Additionally, we aim to identify demographic factors associated with elevated mental health literacy scores. Methods A cross-sectional study using a phone interview survey with quota sampling was conducted for equal distri...

Objective This study aimed to validate the Arabic Version of the Mental Health Literacy Scale (Arabic-MHLS) among the Saudi Arabian general population, assessing its internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and structural validity. Methods A total of 700 Arabic-speaking Saudi adults were randomly selected to complete the electronic questionn...

Objective This study aimed to validate the Arabic Version of the Mental Health Literacy Scale (Arabic-MHLS) among the Saudi Arabian general population, assessing its internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and structural validity. Methods A total of 700 Arabic-speaking Saudi adults were randomly selected to complete the electronic questionn...

Arab states of the Eastern Mediterranean Region share several cultural, social, and religious characteristics, and some similar health challenges and opportunities, despite different socioeconomic features. Over the past few years, the Arab Gulf countries have witnessed significant developments in the field of child and adolescent mental health ser...

Background: There is a large gap between the needs of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the currently available services in Saudi Arabia. Services are often difficult to access, inconsistent in quality, incomplete, unsatisfactory, and costly. As such, there is a national need for expert consensus on the appropriate stan...

Background A major component of illness burden is role impairment. As part of the recently-completed Saudi National Mental Health Survey (SNMHS), we compare the number of days out of role in the Saudi population associated with ten core mental disorders assessed in the survey to those associated with ten commonly occurring chronic physical disorder...

Background: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on populations’ mental health has started to emerge. Objectives: To describe the mental health trends of the risk of major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) between May and August 2020. It also compares the results with pre-COVID-19 results and identifies risk factors as...

Background We recently adapted the published National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis and management guideline to the Saudi Arabian context. It has been postulated that adaptation of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines to the local healthcare context rather than de-no...

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak can potentially be categorized as a traumatic event. Public health surveillance is one of the cornerstones of public health practice, and it empowers decision makers to lead and manage public health crises and programs more effectively by providing timely and useful evidence. Objective: This paper presents the pro...

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 outbreak can potentially be categorized as a traumatic event. Public health surveillance is one of the cornerstones of public health practice, and it empowers decision makers to lead and manage public health crises and programs more effectively by providing timely and useful evidence. OBJECTIVE This paper presents the proto...

Background: We recently adapted the published National institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis and management guideline to the Saudi Arabian context. It has been postulated that adaptation of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines to the local healthcare context rather than de-n...

Background: We recently adapted the published National institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis and management guideline to the Saudi Arabian context. It has been postulated that adaptation of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines to the local healthcare context rather than de-n...

Depression is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses and is often associated with various other medical disorders. Since the 1980s, the primary pharmacological treatment has been antidepressants, but due to the recent discovery of the association between the gut microbiome and mental health, probiotics have been proposed as an adjunctive or alt...

The gut microbiota consists of thousands of microbial species sharing a symbiotic relationship with the human host. These microorganisms have a well-defined role in maintaining optimal function through various avenues including metabolism and immunomodulation. A literature search was accomplished using Google Scholar, MEDLINE, PubMed, and relevant...

The introduction of modern mental healthcare standards and services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), has resulted in a gradual shift towards a more positive perspective on mental health issues and related services, and has increased the demand for qualified mental health professionals and psychological interventions (WHO 2016). Despite recent...

In this paper, I elaborate on the work done in a previous paper that described a psychological model that allows for a better understanding of the intra-psychic experiences of victims of acts of prejudice. The model, centered around the notion of a psychological boundary, or “skin of the self”, provides a possible developmental trajectory for the f...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a term that encompasses neuro developmental disorders characterized by behavioural, communication, and social deficits. In addition to this triad of impairments, changes related to cellular processes including gut permeability, neuro anatomical alterations and neuro-inflammation have also been identified in individ...

In response to a very moving article by Roth and Duaibis, I present commentary on the process of compassionate witnessing. Compassion, both as a concept and as a derivative of parental devotion, is explained and its importance to psychoanalysis discussed. Reflections on the implications of this concept in social contexts as well as the risks to the...

One dimension of insight in psychosis is the ability to attribute correctly one's symptoms to a mental disorder. Recent work suggests that gray matter volumes of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are correlated with aggregate symptom attribution scores in first-episode schizophrenia. Whether regions beyond the OFC are important for symptom attribution...

There is growing interest in the psychodynamics of prejudice. An aspect of prejudice seldom addressed is its peculiar capacity to be injurious to victims. Through a process of self-analysis stimulated by chance reading of some of Freud’s work, I will reflect on the vicissitudes of the development of the function of cultural boundary attributed to t...

This article will review the case of a young patient with mental retardation a autistic disorder, and Tourette Syndrome who exhibited a favourable treatment response preferentially to risperidone. His presentation, however, was complicated by an exquisite sensitivity to risperidone displayed in the form of recurrent oculogyric crises. In this artic...

This article will review the case of a young patient with mental retardation, autistic disorder, and Tourette Syndrome who exhibited a favourable treatment response preferentially to risperidone. His presentation, however, was complicated by an exquisite sensitivity to risperidone displayed in the form of recurrent oculogyric crises. In this articl...

Through conceptualizing poor insight in psychotic disorders as a form of anosognosia (neurological deficit), frontal lobe dysfunction is often ascribed a vital role in its pathogenesis. Whether non-frontal brain regions are important for insight remains to be investigated. We used a multi-method approach to examine the neural morphometry of all cor...

Neuroimaging studies, using various modalities, have evidenced a link between the general intelligence factor (g) and regional brain function and structure in several multimodal association areas. While in the last few years, developments in computational neuroanatomy have made possible the in vivo quantification of cortical thickness, the relation...

Previous studies of cortical asymmetry have relied mainly on voxel-based morphometry (VBM), or manual segmentation of regions of interest. This study uses fully automated, surface-based techniques to analyse position and surface area asymmetry for the mid-surfaces of 112 right-handed subjects' cortical hemispheres from a cohort of young adults. Nat...

Neuroimaging studies, using various modalities, have evidenced a link between the general intelligence factor (g) and regional brain function and structure in several multimodal association areas. While in the last few years, developments in computational neuroanatomy have made possible the in vivo quantification of cortical thickness, the relation...

Muslim intellectuals during medieval times had an enormous appetite for the study of the mental apparatus, delving into metaphysical discussions and debating the methods of harmonizing their discoveries with the basic tenets of orthodox theology. Most such thinkers wore many hats, being physicians, theologians, philosophers, and politicians, among...

Accurate reconstruction of the inner and outer cortical surfaces of the human cerebrum is a critical objective for a wide variety of neuroimaging analysis purposes, including visualization, morphometry, and brain mapping. The Anatomic Segmentation using Proximity (ASP) algorithm, previously developed by our group, provides a topology-preserving cor...

To provide an overview of the history, evolution, and nosology of the diagnostic constructs for "borderline syndrome of childhood," also known as "multiple complex developmental disorder." The authors synthesized information found via electronic searches of databases (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Current Contents, Humanities Abstracts, and Social Sciences Ab...

Does God help? The answer to this question may be elusive, yet definitely a simple one. The answer may be an outgrowth of a certain belief system; if religious it may be called faith, if otherwise it may be called science. The challenge to human intellect posed by this question is whether the gap between these two sources of belief can somehow be b...

To evaluate the therapeutic impact of adding risperidone to milieu therapy of latency-aged inpatients with severe disruptive disorders. The charts of 90 latency-aged patients consecutively admitted to a psychiatry ward were reviewed retrospectively. Fifteen of these patients received risperidone treatment, were nonpsychotic, and did not suffer from...