Gurmeet Kaur has her expertise in adult and addiction psychiatry with about 15 years of clinical experience. She is very hard working and is compassionate towards her patients. She has an equal interest in academic activities as well as research activities going on in the institution where she works.

Introduction and Aims: As per the United Nations World Drug Report (2015), there is the rise of the estimated number of drug users globally since the last 10 years and in India, especially Punjab drug addiction has reached epidemic state. Quality of life is an important parameter for measuring outcomes in chronic illnesses, there is a dearth of studies on it in Northern India especially in Punjab in comparison to other substances. This study aimed to compare the quality of life in men dependent on alcohol or opioids with that of their relatives at Tertiary Care Drug De-Addiction Centre in Punjab.\r\nMethods: The present cross-sectional study compared 100 alcohol- and opioid-dependent men each with 100 controls who were healthy male volunteers from first and second-degree relatives of the patient who were not substance users. Quality of life was measured using WHO-QOL-BREF after screening of patients using DAST and MAST. Linear regression analysis was performed to control for variation across the three groups.\r\nResults: Quality of life was found to be significantly poorer in physical, psychological and social domains in both alcohol- and opioid-dependent men as compared to that of their relatives (p<0.001) with no significant differences in other domains. Linear regression models do not reveal alcohol and opioid dependence as independent predictors of physical, psychological and environmental domains of quality of life.\r\nConclusions: Physical, psychological and social domains of quality of life are poorer in alcohol- and opioid-dependent men as compared to their relatives.\r\n

Simrat Kaur is working as Senior Resident in AIMSR, Bathinda. She is very hard working and is compassionate towards her patients. She has an equal interest in academic activities as well as research activities going on in the institution where she works.

Context: Neurological soft signs (NSS) are minor neurological signs that reflect dysfunction in areas of motor coordination, sensory function, and complex motor tasks, without localization. Schizophrenia and OCD are considered to be neurodevelopmental disorders with structural and functional brain abnormalities.\r\nAims: To study the socio-demographic profile of the drug-naive patients with first episode schizophrenia and OCD and to assess and compare neurological soft signs in them.\r\nSetting and Design: Cross-sectional study includes patients in both in-patient and out-patient settings.\r\nMethods and Materials: A total of 90 patients i.e. 30 each of drug-naive first episode OCD, schizophrenia and healthy controls fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria were recruited by non-probability sampling method and subjected to semi-structured Psychiatric Thesis Performa, The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) and Heidelberg Manual for assessment of NSS.\r\nStatistical Analysis: Statistical analysis was performed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 20.0.0) software. The data were analyzed using the chi-squared test and Pearson\'s co-relational analysis.\r\nResults: On comparison of sociodemographic profile variables, patients of OCD as compared to patients of schizophrenia were in higher age group (p=0.005) and more educated (p=0.006). The maximum percentage of NSS was found in schizophrenia (76.7%) followed by OCD (46.7%) and healthy controls (23.3%) and the difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). The NSS score significantly correlated with the duration of illness of schizophrenia (r=0.518) as well as OCD (r=0.975).\r\nConclusions: NSS are considered as endophenotypes and support the neurodevelopmental basis for both disorders.\r\n