DOSE-DEPENDENT ANTI-DEPRESSANT EFFECT OF CITRUS PARADISI IN REHABILITATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

With advancement in the modern world, psychological issues, including anxiety and depression has become the leading cause of mental illness. Herbal products have been explored to observe their effects in helping such conditions and citrus fruits are found to be among these helping tools. To study this, current research was designed to explore the antidepressant effects of Citrus paradisi in various doses on rodents. Swiss Albino mice were used and fresh extract of Citrus paradisi was prepared. Imipramine was used as the standard drug. Ethical approval was taken from the Board of Advanced Studies, University of Karachi. The animals were divided into controlled, standard and test groups. All the animals were recruited from the animal house of University of Karachi. Forced Swimming Test was used to analyses the efficacy. It is a standard test, which is commonly used to evaluate the behavioral response in animals using a cylinder at room temperature. After the completion of dosing and monitoring the animals for 30 days, it was observed that marked improvement in the test animal’s behavior with significant p-values indicating that the extract has improved the animal’s psychological response towards the external stress and animals showed noteworthy improvement in the mobile phase as compared to the immobile phase. It can be concluded from the experimental results that protocol established in this study can be used as an alternative for patients suffering with depression as an herbal option, keeping in mind the other co morbidities of patient and drug interactions of Citrus paradisi.

Role of Gender Power Sharing in Human Development and Economic Growth

This study has developed the concept of Gender Power Sharing. The concept has been applied to construct Gender Power Sharing Index (GPSI) for thirty three developing countries of the world. The selection of countries is based upon the availability of the data of indicators used for the construction of GPSI. The index has been constructed by taking into account three different dimensions related with male and female„s relative participation in earning, spending and family size decision. The value of measure falls between 0 and 1, where 1 stands for perfect power sharing among male and female in major household concerns. While 0 shows an absence of sharing among male and female. Countries are ranked according to their standing in gender power sharing. GPSI has been found to be moderately correlated with existing gender indices such as Gender Development Index, Gender Inequality Index and Global Gender Gap. Temporal and spatial comparison of GPSI with other gender Indices show that some countries like Jordan and Egypt have low gender power sharing despite their relatively higher ranking in Gender Development Index. Similarly, some countries like Madagascar and Rwanda have higher Gender Power Sharing despite their low ranking in Gender Development Index. In next step, the role of Gender Power Sharing has been investigated to explain the differences of Economic Growth and Human Development across the selected countries. Our empirical findings indicate that gender power sharing as measured by GPSI has positive and significant effect on Economic Growth and Literacy. Among three different dimensions of gender power sharing the role of expenditure sharing has been found as the most important crucial for Economic Growth and Human Development.