Levinger & Clarke (1961) found that subjects tended to forget more word associations to emotional rather than neutral words. Kline (1981) regarded this study as providing “irrefutable evidence for the Freudian concept of repression”. On the other hand, results from Kleinsmith & Kaplan (1964) suggested that this effect may reverse after a delay. The present study attempted to replicate Levinger & Clark's result using stimulus words balanced for concreteness and frequency. In addition, recall was tested immediately and after a delay. Associations to emotional material were more poorly recalled immediately than associations to material which was low in emotional valence, but tended to be better recalled a month later. There were no differences in recall of pleasant versus unpleasant material. Results do not support the repression hypothesis, in that emotional material becomes more memorable over time. Moreover, repression should differentially apply to unpleasant rather than pleasant material but no such differences were found.

The aim was to study women before and after hysterectomy (with conservation of the ovaries), in order to discover how far premenstrual symptoms are caused physically and how far psychologically. In such women both physical and psychological factors can influence premenstrual symptoms before hysterectomy; after the operation, in the absence of menstruation, only physical factors can do so. The subjects were 56 women awaiting hysterectomy for menorrhagia of benign origin. During three pre-operative months these women made daily self-ratings on a check-list in which typical premenstrual symptoms were interspersed with atypical symptoms; in this way their awareness of the premenstrual focus was minimized. Starting six months after hysterectomy, the women again kept daily check-lists for three months; over the same period their serum progesterone levels were measured to identify the premenstruum. After hysterectomy, levels of premenstrual symptoms fell significantly in the whole group, indicating that psychological factors were important determinants of such symptoms before hysterectomy.

On the basis of nationwide patient register data the diagnostic pattern of the medical admissions of a general population (17–49 year-olds; N = 30427) during an 8-year period was studied by comparing those individuals who had been admitted to the psychiatric department (i.e. psychiatric patients) with those individuals who had not. The results suggest that the high utilization of medical admissions by psychiatric patients could not be explained simply by coincident chronic physical illness or particular types of physical disease including the somatic complications of mental disorders. It is more likely to be attributable to other factors such as an increased general susceptibility to physical illness, different forms of illness behaviour, and the process of somatization.

P300 responses to emotive words of different hedonic tones were assessed in depressed patients (unipolar major), patients recovered from the same type of depression and normal controls. Depressed patients showed a smaller amplitude of P300 in response to negatively toned words than to positive words; normal controls showed the opposite pattern and recovered patients showed a pattern of response which resembled that of depressed patients. The experimental trials comparing responses to negative and positive stimuli in relation to neutral words showed significant differences for negative as compared with neutral stimuli, but not for positive as compared with neutral stimuli. Latencies of P300 did not differentiate depressed patients from normal controls. The results are discussed within the context of the ‘expectancy’ theory of information processing.

Chronic schizophrenic patients in a long stay hospital were found to have low levels of intelligence (mean IQ of 80), which was attributed to the effects of substantial intellectual deterioration on below average pre-morbid levels of functioning. Patients with the lowest IQ scores had the least severe positive symptoms but symptomatology was not related to age or extent of intellectual decline. Speed of functioning was relatively more impaired than level of intellectual functioning, with cognitive speed being more affected than motor speed. The severity of negative but not positive symptoms was significantly related to the severity of bradyphrenia (cognitive slowing), a result which would be consistent with the notion of a subcortical pathology in patients with Type II schizophrenia.

Evidence of linkage in families of bipolar patients has so far been identified with genetic markers on chromosome X and 11. However, replications of these data have not consistently been reported in either case, which favours the hypothesis of genetic heterogeneity. Therefore, we have tried to outline a sampling strategy for linkage replication in affective disorders. We estimated the average number of nuclear families required to replicate X or 11 linkage as a function of the degree of heterogeneity as well as the number to prove heterogeneity given that linkage exists. The results are presented and discussed.

In this study, 51 chronic schizophrenic in-patients were evaluated for a range of demographic, clinical and medication variables, and followed up over five years. There was no significant overall change in cognitive function in this patient group as a whole, suggesting the absence of active disease at this stage of the illness. The only correlate of individual instances of cognitive deterioration over the study period was the emergence of new cases of tardive buccal-lingual-masticatory but not of limb-trunkal dyskinesia, and the greater severity of such movement disorder. A positive family history was also identified prospectively as a predictor of the emergence of tardive dyskinesia in chronic schizophrenia.

A group of psychiatric in-patients significantly over-estimated the intensity of their depression when asked to recollect how depressed they had been one week earlier. The initial level of depression affected the accuracy of recall. Unexpectedly, patients who were more depressed initially had more accurate recall, particularly for biological and symptomatically negative items of the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale.

A genetic analysis was conducted on trait neuroticism and symptoms of anxiety and depression in a five-wave study of 462 twin pairs. Models that assessed the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors to the lability (within-individual variability over time) of these measures were fitted to the data. Previous results concerning the substantial genetic involvement in the level of neuroticism and symptoms were confirmed. However, it was found that neither genes nor the shared environment of the twins was a significant cause of lability of these measures. An attempt was therefore made to identify aspects of individuals' environments that might be responsible for lability of neuroticism and symptoms. Adverse life events were found to predict variability of symptoms, but not of neuroticism. The availability of close social ties or having affectionless control in childhood did not contribute to lability.

The performance of patients with a presumptive clinical diagnosis of Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type was compared to that of a group of normal elderly on several memory and neuropsychological tasks. The patients were impaired on tasks of free and cued recall, but exhibited normal performance on a word-completion procedure similar to that used by Graf et al. (1984). Reasons for the discrepancy between these findings and those from related research which reports impairment of word completion in patients with Alzheimer's Disease are discussed. Of particular interest is the role the orientating task plays in word-completion performance.

This study developed a method for measuring subjective costs and benefits of psychiatric treatments. Forty-one patients rated the relative bothersomeness of symptoms of schizophrenia and side effects of neuroleptics. Thirty-four psychiatrists made parallel ratings from the perspective of the average patient (individual utility) and of the patient's family and society (institutional utility). Psychiatrists predicted patients' ratings moderately well, but misjudged the bothersomeness to patients of 24% of side effects and 20% of symptoms. When considering the patient's perspective, both schizophrenic patients and psychiatrists rated symptoms as no more bothersome than side effects. However, psychiatrists saw side effects as significantly less bothersome than symptoms when considering costs to society. The subjective utility of neuroleptic medications for schizophrenia is most justifiable from an institutional perspective.

Audio-taped interviews recorded in the Gottesman–Shields schizophrenic twin series (17 pairs of identical twins, 14 pairs of fraternal same-sex twins, and 12 unpaired twins) were rated for level of hedonic capacity. Schizophrenics who were not hospitalized at the time of their interview were rated significantly lower (more impaired) on hedonic capacity than their normal co-twins. A significant negative correlation was also found between hedonic capacity and severity of illness. Hedonic capacity was found to be genetically influenced, although it appeared to be less heritable than the global diagnosis of schizophrenia. These results are consistent with Meehl's suggestion that reduced hedonic capacity is a heritable personality trait which potentiates the development of schizophrenia among those who are genetically predisposed to the disorder. The results suggest that anhedonia is not a phenotypic vulnerability marker for schizophrenia.

Forty-four patients who met criteria for major depressive disorder were assessed for presence of dysfunctional attitudes and negative self-schema on admission. After six weeks, of sixteen patients who had shown high dysfunctional attitudes, six (35%) had not recovered. By contrast, of seventeen patients who had been equally severely depressed at the outset, but had low dysfunctional attitudes, only one (6%) had not recovered. The rating by the patients of themselves, as opposed to their attitudes, did not however predict. Thirty-one patients were tested six months later. Twenty-one (68%) remained asymptomatic, ten patients had relapsed or not responded to treatment, but neither type of admission measure predicted the state at this point. This is consistent with previous evidence which suggests that vulnerable attitudes assessed when symptomatic predict recovery, but that for prediction of relapse, cognitive measures need to be used when the patient is asymptomatic.

It is demonstrated first that staff explanations of problem behaviour can be reliably coded using a modified form of the Attributional Style Questionnaire; and second, that staff explanations are related through staff optimism to anticipated helping behaviour. This supports the hypothesis that, in professional staff, an important determinant of helping is optimism arising from attributions of a patient's problems. The influence of affective judgements, as emphasized in Weiner's (1986) theory of helping behaviour, is not supported.

In a retrospective case note study, 73 young females with anorexia nervosa were compared with 88 young females with affective psychosis. These groups of patients did not differ in terms of place of residence, birth order or social class. They differed very significantly, however, in terms of age at onset of symptoms, marital status, educational attainments and in the pattern of family histories of psychiatric illness. It is concluded that anorexics and young females with affective disorders are two quite distinct groups of patients.

Under three types of artificial lighting 24 women with chronic agoraphobia and 24 female control subjects assessed their mood and bodily symptoms, and their heart rate was measured. One of the three types of lighting was incandescent. The other two were fluorescent, one pulsating in the conventional manner 100 times per second and the other relatively steady. Both were provided by a single fluorescent lamp controlled from one of two circuits. When exposed to the conventional pulsating fluorescent light under double-blind conditions the agoraphobic group showed a higher heart rate and reported more anomalous visual effects in response to an epileptogenic pattern. Control subjects reported more bodily symptoms under the conventional fluorescent light than under the two other lighting conditions.

In this study gender differences in coping were explored, using the Ways of Coping Checklist (WCC; Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). In addition, the focus was on sex differences in the predictive value of coping strategies in relation to psychosomatic symptoms. Males preferred problem-focused coping strategies, planned and rational actions, positive thinking, personal growth and humour, day-dreaming and fantasies. Women preferred emotion-focused coping solutions, self-blame, expression of emotions/seeking of social support, and wishful thinking/emotionality. In spite of the gender differences the results of multiple regression analyses indicated congruous relationships between coping and complaints for both sexes. Stressors and coping factors contributed in much the same way to the explained variance of symptoms and the results were generally similar for males and females. The present data also emphasize the bidirectionality of the coping–symptoms link. This holds especially for self-blame, day-dreaming and fantasizing, and wishful thinking/emotionality. In contrast, distancing was found to be associated with self-reported psychosocial load. Future prospective studies should explicitly pay attention to this bidirectional relationship.

The occurrence and course of eating disorder in a large representative population of 15-year-old London schoolgirls has been assessed using a two-stage survey methodology. Attempts to control weight were common and often transient. Dieting was in the great majority of girls found to be a benign practice without progression to more extreme concerns about food and weight. However, a small proportion of dieters did become cases and formed the majority of new cases found at follow-up. The relative risk of dieters becoming cases was eight times that of non-dieters. Many factors conventionally associated with eating disorder were associated more with attempting weight control than caseness. These included pre-morbid personality, pre-morbid obesity and family weight pathology. Other factors, including social class, career choice and psychosexual development, had no association either with attempting weight control or caseness.

The current study investigated a model of post-trauma reactions proposed initially by McFarlane (1988 a). Two separate data sets, one obtained following a multiple shooting and the other reported by McFarlane following a natural disaster, were examined. The findings of both studies provide support for a cognitive processing conceptualization of the development of post-trauma reactions.

An analysis of the coping styles adopted by relatives of schizophrenic patients has been identified by many reviewers as essential to an understanding of the complex interactions between patient and caregiver and to the origins of relatives' expressed emotion (EE). This study reports a taxonomy of coping behaviour derived from interviews with relatives of schizophrenic patients. It was found that relatives adopted broad styles of coping across all areas of patients' behaviour change. Relationships were uncovered between the styles and (a) relatives perceived control, burden and stress, (b) patients' social functioning, severity of behavioural disturbance and progress of the illness. It is suggested that advising relatives of changes in their coping styles in the course of family intervention must be tempered by an understanding of their origins in patients' behaviour. Further research is recommended to identify the coping styles associated with the high EE/low EE research classification.