Also known as excoriation disorder and skin-picking disorder, dermatillomania is a psychological condition that manifests as repetitive, compulsive skin picking. Repetitive skin picking extends to pulling, squeezing, scraping, lancing, and even biting both healthy and damaged skin from various parts of the body. Herein, we presented a female patient with excoriation disorder.

The aim of this study is to detect the prevalence of autistic symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC). The sample of this study included 51 children (42 males, 9 females) at 8-18 ages diagnosed with ADHD in psychiatry and child psychiatry clinics of University Research and Education Hospital between 01/03/2016 - 31/05/2016 and 58 controls (48 males, 10 females) without ADHD with similar age, sex, and education features. Results showed higher results for children with ADHD in total ABC scale and all of its 5 subscales than children without ADHD  (p<0.001).  The rate of ADHD diagnosis in first degree relatives of children with ADHD was significantly higher than relatives of the control group (p<0.001). Another finding of the study was lower employment rate in the mothers of the ADHD children compared with the mothers of the control children (p=0.023). The most important finding of this study was that in the patient group, the score of the ABC scale and the score of each subscale were significantly higher than the control group. This conclusion suggests that children with ADHD may have symptoms that may disrupt social functions such as communication problems. It also points out that children with ADHD should be addressed in this respect too.

BDNF is a member of the neurotrophic family that promotes the development, regeneration, sustaining and maintenance of neuron function in the central nervous system. BDNF modulates neurotransmitter synthesis, metabolism and neuronal activity and is also involved in the development of dopaminergic-related systems, and the mesolimbic dopamine systems. In this study we aimed to investigate the possible differences of serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels between the drug-naive patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Serum BDNF levels were determined in the serum of 35 drug-naive patients diagnosed as schizophrenia according to SCID-I and DSM-IV-TR criteria and 35 healthy controls subjects matched for gender and age. The schizophrenia symptomatology was assessed by the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS). The results showed that BDNF levels were significantly lower in drug-naive patients with schizophrenia than in healthy control subjects (p=0.000). There was a significant difference in BDNF levels between disorganized and paranoid (p = 0.000), disorganized and undifferentiated schizophrenia (p = 0.000) subtypes. There was no significant difference in BDNF levels between the undifferentiated and paranoid schizophrenia subtypes (p = 0.081). The relationship between PANSS scores and subscale scores and serum BDNF levels was not found to be significant (p>0.05). The relationship between general assessment of functionality scores and serum BDNF levels was examined and there was a positive correlation between them (p = 0.07, r = 0.445). Our findings showed decreased BDNF serum levels in a sample of drug-naive patients with schizophrenia. Lower serum levels of BDNF in a sample of drug-naive patients with schizophrenia are consistent with the hypothesis that a deficit in this neurotrophic factor may contribute to the structural and functional alterations of brain underlying in the initial phase of schizophrenia suggesting that neurodevelopmental disturbances may be involved in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia.