Substance Abuse and Psychopathology - Athens Psychiatric Conference - Dec.2 2012

Substance Abuse and Psychopathology - a chicken and egg dilemna Organized by the Hellenic Section of Itaca Dec. 2, 2012 Chairs: I. Liappas (Greece) Z.. Daifti (Greece)

( I woke at 2 am last night, my older biological clocks arthritic arms refusing to digitally adjust. This morning I slept in, but would not forego the breakfast treats offered by Hotel Ilisia’s kitchen. Consequently having indulged myself I arrived late to this series of lectures I’d ear marked earlier in the program. Addiction Psychiatry is my subspeciality but this morning the fair in other lecture series included the definitive update on insomnia as well as post traumatic stress disorder. Sneaking in I didn’t even notice that while the slides were in English the speaker was speaking Greek. The chair came down and shared that the next presentation would be in English.)  

As it was I missed the Neurobiological Approach of Drug Abuse Psychopathology presented by Z. Daifti but did appreciate his later comments. I also missed Neuropsychiatric Sequelae of alcohol abuse by T. Paparrigopoulos but expect with my clinical experience there’s little that would surprise me, alcohol and drug abuse being called the ‘great chameleon’ of psychiatric diagnosis.

Alcohol related disorders and psychiatric co morbidities, an overview was the one I caught. The slides were excllent going into detail with the latest in topics like alcoholic dementia. Drug Abuse and psychopathology

The role of the family by Dr. Dr. Pomini presented a study done by their unit . Study comparing 41 families with heroin addicted male child, 17 families with schizophrenia and a matched sample of 27 non clinical families. Stressful life events in nuclear family - psyvhiatric and chronic physical illness were higher in two clinical samples as was divorce. Migration was actually higher in the control. When the amount of life events is more it’s much more difficult for family to cope without significant suffering. This presents also the possibility for prevention of development of these severe clinical illnesses by early identification and possibly early therapy for those at risk. In subsequent discussion Dr. Pomini said that while there are many stresses considered for families at this time she thought it most important to look at the major objective factors rather than be caught up in subjective concerns. In this regard they noted major losses for children such as divorce . This was noted to be a significant life event in their population.