The medical notes of 91 women who had a psychiatric illness requiring admission within nine months of childbirth were studied. The incidence of post-partum psychosis was 3 per 1000 births, of which 66% were affective psychoses.

Of 20 patients attending a clinic for maintenance therapy of schizophrenia, seven had regular panic attacks, and these were often associated with agoraphobia and social phobia. Similar fears and avoidance in other cases were associated with paranoid ideas and negative symptoms. The relationship of panic to psychotic symptoms varied greatly. In two patients neuroleptics were associated with an increase in panic attacks.

Five index patients and three of their first-degree relatives were affected both by schizophrenia and Marfan syndrome. Since the association appears statistically significant, the possibility of linkage disequilibrium between adjacent genes or a cytogenetic abnormality causing both disorders is suggested. These hypotheses are testable and hold promise in attempting to map the ‘schizophrenia susceptibility gene’ by the candidate-gene approach.

A woman developed rigidity, autonomic instability and altered consciousness after taking an overdose of trifluoperazine and carbamazepine. A diagnosis of NMS was made despite the absence of fever, as carbamazepine might modify the presentation of NMS.

A 52-year-old woman, whose initial psychiatric presentation at the age of 15 was with a disorder resembling schizophrenia, developed symptoms of Klüver–Bucy syndrome, and is now thought to suffer from an organic psychotic disorder. Klüver–Bucy syndrome must be distinguished from symptoms of schizophrenia or affective disorder; its presence suggests an organic process.

A patient with an abnormality in the right temporal lobe presented with episodes of mania many years before the clinical manifestation of both a simple partial seizure and complex partial seizures.

Four patients with IQs below 50 displayed suicidal behaviour. This refutes the notion that the severely mentally handicapped are unable to form such an intention.