Objective: Self-esteem is an important component of psychological health. In Malaysia, Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale remained the single most popular utilized scale for studying global self-esteem. This study aims to design a language, culture and illness specific self-esteem questionnaire. Methods: The study consisted of 2 phases. The first phase was to generate items for the new self-esteem questionnaire (SSES) in Bahasa Malaysia. Literature review on the concept of self- esteem and its’ content was conducted. This was followed by expert opinion from professional care-givers. The items were qualitatively validated by healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia from the same locality, culture and language. The second phase consists of quantitative validation of the items. Items in the new scale were analyzed based on the responses from 165 stable schizophrenia outpatients. The validated Malay version of Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSES) was used concurrently as a comparison. Results: The SSES displayed good internal consistency for its two domains (Cronbach’s alpha=0.88, 0.81) and test-retest reliability (ICC), ranged from 0.44 to 0.87. Its construct validity was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. The concurrent validity of SSES and RSES using Pearson correlation was 0.77. The Cronbach’s alpha for the validated Malay version of RSES is 0.67. Conclusion: This study presents a new self-esteem questionnaire (SSES) which has high concurrent validity with the standard RSES and confirms the reliability and validity of SSES in Malay patients with Schizophrenia.

Objective: The present study aims to assess verbal memory performance in patients with schizophrenia attending HUSM and determine the relationship between the patients’ verbal memory performance and their demographic/clinical factors. Methods: A cross sectional study of 114 patients with schizophrenia attending HUSM psychiatric services from December 2007 to May 2008 was conducted. The schizophrenia symptoms as well as verbal memory performance were assessed using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, the Malay version of the Calgary Depression Scale (MVCDS), and the Malay version of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (MVAVLT). The relationship between verbal memory performance and demographic/clinical symptoms was evaluated using Pearson Correlation. Results: Overall MVAVLT scores in all the trials were lowered in patients with schizophrenia compared to average healthy controls. There were significant relationships between occupational status and MVAVLT performance in Trial A1-A5 Total; between educational level and MVAVLT performance in Trial A1 and Trial A1-A5 Total and between severities of illness and MVAVLT performance in all indexes except Trial A1 after controlled for occupation and educational level. Conclusions: Patient with schizophrenia in HUSM performed significantly worse than healthy controls in verbal memory with or without interference. There were significant relationships between MVAVLT performance and patient’s occupational status, educational level and severity of the illness but not depressive symptoms.

A 39 years old gentleman presented with red painful right eye.He had self-inflicted an injury to his right eye with a wooden stick and he saw a vision of an old man indicating him to do so.Clinically,the right eye was moderately proptosed,complete ophthalmoplegia and the periorbital skin was severely swollen.Imaging showed right orbital cellulitis with inferior ophthalmic vein thrombosis,bilateral cavernous sinus syndromeandimpending cavernous sinus thrombosis.No intraorbital or intraocular foreign body was reported.Despite aggressive intraven ous antimicrobials,the patient's condition was not improved.Exploration done under anesthesia exposed a huge wooden stick at the inferior fornix.Patient showed a remarkable recovery after the removal of the foreign body may occur in psychiatry patient that a possibility of selfinflicted injury.A detailhistory,examinationand appropriate investigations are mandatory to reveal the correlated clinical findings with imaging studies are the most helpful guide in managing intraorbital foreign body could potentially prevent further serious morbidity or