Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:35:35.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Constitution and the Psychiatry of Old Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

I. C. Lodge Patch
Affiliation:
Springfield Hospital, S.W.17
F. Post
Affiliation:
The Bethlem Royal Hospital and The Maudsley Hospital, S.E.5
P. Slater
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, The Maudsley Hospital, S.E.5

Extract

Under the concept of constitution are subsumed the predispositions towards illness, and the resistances against illness, to which genetical make-up and environmental experience have contributed during the preceding lifetime of the individual. It is in that sense that “constitution” will be used in the rest of this paper. Old age provides a vantage-point of particular value for the study of constitution, since it is possible to examine in retrospect over a long span of time the changes and vicissitudes which have affected it.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1965 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Betz, B. J. (1942). “Somatology of the schizophrenic patient.” Human Biology, 14, 2147, 192–234.Google Scholar
Burt, C. (1937). “The analysis of temperament.” Brit. J. Med. Psychol, 17, 158188.Google Scholar
Burt, C. and Banks, C. (1947). “A factor analysis of body measurements for British adult males.” Ann. Eugen., 13, 238256.Google Scholar
Freudenberg, R. K., and Robertson, J. P. S. (1956). “Personal stresses in relation to psychiatric illness.” Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., 49, 10341040.Google Scholar
Funding, T. (1961). “Genetics of paranoid psychoses in later life.” Acta Psychiat. Scand., 37, 267282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kallmann, F. J. (1948). “Applicability of modern genetic concepts in the management of schizophrenia.” J. Hered., 39, 339344.Google Scholar
Kallmann, F. J. and Barrera, S. E. (1941). “The heredoconstitutional mechanisms of predisposition and resistance to schizophrenia.” Amer. J. Psychiat., 98, 544550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, D. W. K. (1959). “Observations on the natural history and genetics of old age psychoses: a Stockholm material, 1931–1937.” Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., 52, 791794.Google Scholar
Kay, D. W. K., Roth, M., and Hopkins, B. (1955). “Affective disorders arising in the senium. I. Their association with organic cerebral degeneration.” J. Ment. Sci., 101, 302316.Google Scholar
Kay, D. W. K., Roth, M., and Hopkins, B. (1961). “Environmental and hereditary factors in the schizophrenias of old age (‘late paraphrenia’) and their bearing on the general problem of causation in schizophrenia.” Ibid., 107, 649686.Google Scholar
Kretschmer, E. (1936). Physique and Character. English translation. London.Google Scholar
Lasker, G. W. (1953). “The age factor in bodily measurements of adult male and female Mexicans.” Human Biology, 25, 5063.Google Scholar
Lipscomb, F. M., and Parnell, R. W. (1954). “The physique of Chelsea Pensioners.” J. Royal Army Med. Corps, 100, 247355.Google Scholar
Lodge Patch, I. C., Post, F., and Slater, P. (1961). “Physique and mental illness in old age.” Proc. of the Third World Congress of Psychiatry, 1, 677682.Google Scholar
Newman, R. W. (1952). “Age changes in body build.” Amer. J. Phys. Anthropol., 10, 7590.Google Scholar
Parnell, R. W. (1954). “Somatotyping by physical anthropometry.” Ibid., 12, 209239.Google Scholar
Post, F. (1962). “The significance of affective symptoms in old age: a follow-up study of one hundred patients.” Maudsley Monograph No. 10. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rees, W. L. (1950a). “Body size, personality and neurosis.” J. Ment. Sci., 96, 168180.Google Scholar
Rees, W. L. (1950b). “Body build, personality and neurosis in women.” Ibid., 96, 426434.Google Scholar
Rees, W. L. and Eysenck, H. J. (1945). “A factorial study of some morphological and psychological aspects of human constitution.” Ibid., 91, 821.Google Scholar
Roth, M., and Kay, D. W. K. (1956). “Affective disorder arising in the senium. II. Physical disability as an aetiological factor.” Ibid., 102, 141150.Google Scholar
Stenstedt, A. (1959). “Involutional melancholia. An etiologic, clinical and social study of endogenous depression in later life, with special reference to genetic factors.” Acta Psychiat. et Neurol. Scand. Supp. 127, 34, 171.Google Scholar
Tanner, J. M. (1953). “Growth of the human at the time of adolescence.” Lect. Sci. Basis Med., 1, 308363.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.