The notion of transcultural psychiatry is an attractive one. It creates visions of palm-lined beaches and tropical abundance in the midst of which energetic epidemiology leads to aetiological revelations. Nissl commented to his friend Kraepelin (1904), about to embark on his journey to Java, that his research was only a scientific cloak to hide his enthusiasm for travel—a jest that all subsequent transcultural workers have had to suffer. It is unfortunate that not only are the palms and beaches overrated but the differences in culture and morbidity found are often scarcely greater than those existing between sections of one's own society, where even communication may be as great a problem. Even if the contribution made to the understanding of our own illnesses is meagre, transcultural studies can still be justified because they allow us to evaluate the needs of the peoples studied and, we may hope, permit us to indicate how they may be helped. The view sometimes expressed, particularly by anthropologists, that one should endeavour to observe without changing is unacceptable to doctors. Help is indeed required—there are no noble savages nowadays.

The original aim of the U.S./U.K. Diagnostic Project, founded in 1965, was to examine differences in the national statistics for the diagnostic frequencies among patients admitted to state mental hospitals in the United States of America and to area mental hospitals in England and Wales.

This study examines a series of elderly admissions to a psychiatric hospital and a geriatric hospital serving the same catchment area in order to evaluate the success of the two hospital services in separating their patients into two groups, and to study the effect, if any, on the prognosis of those patients who were ‘incorrectly labelled’.

The original aim of Industrial Therapy Units, which exist in most psychiatric hospitals, was to preserve or re-establish outside interests and standards by providing work of an industrial nature (Wadsworth, 1962), but often they merely offer the patient activity and occupation. The staff of the Industrial Therapy Unit at Clifton Hospital were concerned about some patients who benefited very little from attendance, and they devised a project to improve this. Qualitatively the patients appeared to benefit but the staff were unable to measure this. They therefore approached the Psychology Department, and a structured programme was designed with emphasis on measurement and control of variables. There was very little to be found in the literature on experiments in an Industrial Therapy setting (see references).

The basic controversy in criminology at present is that between the psychiatric school and the sociological school. Members of the latter school recognize that psychogenic factors must be taken into account in the explanation of criminal behaviour, and members of the psychiatric school have recognized the importance of social and cultural conditions. But there is disagreement on the extent to which ‘Personality’ and ‘Culture’ should be emphasized in criminological theories.

The Marke-Nyman Temperament Scale (MNTS) is a questionnaire based on Sjöbring's theory of personality structure.

Since the discovery of adenosine 3'5'-cyclic monophosphate (cyclic AMP) by Sutherland and Rall (1958), the concept has evolved that this nucleotide acts as the second messenger substance for many neurotransmitter and hormone-induced responses (Sutherland, Robison and Butcher, 1968). Cyclic AMP occurs in high concentration in the brain. Cyclic AMP is functionally closely related, and possibly fundamental, to the action of catecholamines and serotonin, both of which have been implicated in the amine hypothesis of depression (Granville-Grossman, 1971). Cyclic AMP is formed from ATP by the action of an enzyme adenyl cyclase, and it is degraded by the enzyme cyclic-AMP-phosphodiesterase (Lancet, Editorial, 1970) both of which occur in brain.

In this study we have compared certain personality variables in alcoholic individuals, depressed subjects and in controls.

The application of techniques of behaviour modification to chronic adult psychiatric in-patients has for the most part been directed towards individual patients, and to specific problems such as hoarding, eating, soiling or speech (Ayllon, 1963; Ayllon and Haughton, 1962, 1964; Ayllon and Michael, 1959; Bachrach et al., 1965; Isaacs et al., 1960; Mertens and Fuller, 1963; Kennedy, 1964; Sherman, 1965). In this country, Baker (1970, 1971) and Kassorla (1968) have reported on the use of operant conditioning in reinstating speech in mute schizophrenics. There have, however, been few British reports relating to groups of patients, for example in wards where nurses have been trained to function as ‘behavioural engineers' (Ayllon and Michael, 1959); whereas Krasner and Attowe (1968) specified no fewer than 200 institutions and individuals in the U.S.A. currently involved in token reinforcement programmes, concerned with disturbed or autistic children, delinquent adolescents and the mentally handicapped; 22 projects involved chronic adult psychiatric in-patients.

Psychotherapy can borrow an empirical base from behaviour technology, a discipline which involves the control and prediction of behaviour through environmental manipulation. Fundamental to the achievement of control and prediction is measurement.

Evidences suggest that the predisposed individual can develop dependence to various tranquillizers even to the extent of physical dependence similar to that seen with the barbiturates. Dependence can develop to benzodiazepine derivatives, and cases have been reported mainly for chlordiazepoxide, diazepam and oxazepam. These drugs can also produce withdrawal reactions (Hollister et al., 1963; Barten, 1965; Krypsin-Exner, 1966; Bakewell and Wikler, 1966; Essing, 1966; Gordon, 1967; Ewing and Bakewell, 1967; Hanna, 1972).

There is a general agreement about the less disruptive effect on memory and the shorter post-treatment confusion after unilateral electroconvulsive therapy (UNI-ECT) as compared with the traditional bifrontotemporal ECT (BI-ECT). However, there are divergent opinions about its therapeutic efficacy.