Emotional illness in psychiatric post-graduate trainees has been the topic of several papers in recent years (1, 2, 3). In summary, these papers suggest that emotional illness in psychiatric training is common. Anxiety and depression characterize these illnesses and occur most frequently in the first year of training. But, as Halleck and Woods have stated, ‘Information as to the prevalence of anxiety states, depression, suicide, psychoses or serious acting out is unavailable’ (4).

The object of this work has been to examine the lipid constituents of human brains at different ages in order to follow the course of increasing myelination.

Verbal and visuospatial memory and dichotic listening performance were examined in 15 acutely depressed patients with no history of ECT, 17 depressed patients currently in remission, 15 remitted depressed patients who had received ECT six months or more in the past, and 20 normal controls. The neuropsychological functioning of an additional group of 10 acutely depressed patients was also studied before and two weeks after ECT. The results revealed some evidence of logical and autobiographical memory impairment two weeks following ECT, but no evidence that ECT impaired dichotic listening ability. Rather, a normalisation of hemispheric laterality was apparent on the dichotic listening task following ECT and the concomitant relief from depression. There was also no evidence of cognitive dysfunction on any task in individuals who were tested six months or more following their last ECT treatment.

This paper confirms previous findings that the incidence of suicide in England and Wales is greater than that in Eire, but shows that the incidence in 1968–70 was only twice as high, and not four times as stated in the official statistics.

A total of 328 patients were admitted for deliberate self harm (DSH) to the General Hospital Jaffna, Sri Lanka, during the year 1984. Twenty-two of these patients succumbed to their injuries. Information about these patients collected before death, and their methods of suicide, are reported.

The immature psyche of the child is at least as easily upset by both organic and psychological factors as is that of the adult. The slightest fever or digestive upset may, in a child, lead to bad temper, lack of appetite and sleeplessness. In spite, however, of the ease with which minor psychological disorders are brought about, the severe mental disturbances constituting the psychoses are very infrequently met with. Those to be described occur in the early years of life. Some of them resemble serious behaviour and personality disorders; some would seem to be of organic ætiology. Common to all are regressive changes leading especially to loss of recent attainments, and to some disorganization of the personality following a hitherto normal development.

This paper describes a preliminary survey, in which an attempt was made to discover if recognizable E.E.G. patterns could be correlated with consistent patterns of behaviour in a group of aged mental hospital patients.

The outcome for a group of outpatients treated daily for 12 weeks in a dynamic group psychotherapy programme, was evaluated on both objective and subjective parameters. In the post-therapy year, the majority (82%) reduced their dependence on psychiatric services and showed considerable change in self-satisfaction, as assessed by an attitude test. Those available for follow-up three years later had maintained the change. There was a sub-group of patients (17%) who demonstrated an increase in service use in the post-therapy year.

HLA haplotypes A and B were studied in eight familes with two or more schizophrenic members. All index cases and all but two sick relatives satisfied Research Diagnostic Criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia; 45 subjects were studied. Data were analysed by sequential tests for the detection of linkage and by the affected sib-pair method. The results do not support a linkage between HLA and schizophrenia.

In recent years, a number of surveys of attempted suicides have been reported (Middleton et al., 1961; Sclare and Hamilton, 1963; Parkin and Stengel, 1965; Whitlock and Schapira, 1967). Other studies (Kessel, 1965; Oswald, 1966) have shown that the number of cases of attempted suicide has greatly increased in the last decade. Apart from one survey from Tasmania (Gold, 1965), all these have come from large urban or industrial communities.

Teachers' comments in the childhood school records (grades K-12) of 143 psychiatric patients and their matched controls were coded along 23 bipolar dimensions. Two methods of grouping these scales were compared: rational clusters and factor analysis. Factor analysis yielded more numerous and narrowly defined behavioural groupings. Schizophrenics, personality disorder patients, neurotics, and depressives were compared to their matched controls on each of the cluster and factor scores. Both schizophrenics and personality disordered patients were significantly less agreeable in childhood than their respective controls. Pre-schizophrenics also were significantly more unstable. Depressives were more independent than their controls, while neurotics did not differ significantly in any respect from normals in childhood. The data suggest that schizophrenia may have specific developmental patterns of possible aetiological or early diagnostic significance.

N-acetyl-β-glucosaminadase (NAG) is a renal enzyme which is an early, sensitive and reliable indicator of renal damage. NAG assays of midstream spot urines were not significantly different in a group of controls when compared to patients starting lithium for the first time, or to a group of patients who had been taking lithium for more than one year. However, a small number of lithium-treated patients may have evidence of renal damage, identifiable by NAG assay.

The details of 98 women sterilized over a three-year period are presented. They show that female sterilization is a safe procedure which has a satisfactory result in many cases and confers many secondary benefits. However, some regret is common and is associated with a high incidence of psychiatric and marital morbidity, and this is shown to be related to pre-operative factors. A method of pre-operative assessment is outlined which should minimize the risk of a poor outcome following female sterilization.

Sovner et al (1985) proposed that the presence of Down's Syndrome (DS) precludes the possibility of concomitant mama, and this is not a new claim, since Earl (1961) had stated that neither cyclothymia nor manic-depressive psychosis occurred in the mentally retarded. While Sovner et al conceded that cases of mania in individuals with DS may simply have gone unrecognised or unpublished, they felt this to be unlikely. However, lest this suggestion enter the canon, we present a previously unreported case of a young adult with both DS and recurrent mania.

Favourable results have been reported from the use of lysergide in a wide variety of psychiatric conditions, but controlled studies (2, 3, 4) have not confirmed the existence of a therapeutic effect. In this experiment, alcoholics and neurotics who had been referred by Saskatoon psychiatrists for LSD treatment were allocated at random to Treatment and Control groups after undergoing a series of psychological tests. The members of the Treatment group were offered up to five LSD experiences at intervals of two weeks, whereas those in the Control group were informed that this type of therapy would be made available to them after a twelve-month waiting period. Accounts of the LSD experiences were sent to the referring psychiatrists, who were expected to continue to provide standard treatment to the members of both groups.

Jung wrote his Type Psychology in 1914, but does not seem to have developed any further its general thesis. The terms “introvert” and “extravert”, however, have slipped into everyday language, and experimental studies and questionnaire inquiries on introversion-extraversion continue to be published in psychological journals. Ink-blots, ambiguous figures, and even knee-jerks are called upon to measure this fundamental tendency of man; inventories and self-rating sheets are employed widely to estimate it; and yet it appears to evade capture. There is as yet little or no evidence anywhere that a coherent tendency of the kind looked for does in fact exist.

Major depressive episodes are common in bipolar disorder, which consequently may be misdiagnosed as major depressive disorder. Improved detection of bipolar disorder rests upon better ascertainment of a history of hypomania. Antidepressants are of dubious benefit in bipolar disorder and more accurate diagnosis of depression would promote better treatment.

Oral intake of amphetamine may cause the development of a schizophrenia-like paranoid psychosis (Monroe and Drell 1947, Connell 1958, Kiloh and Brandon 1962). Intravenous abuse of the drug causes more intense psychotic manifestations dominated by vivid visual and auditory hallucinations (Connell 1958, Kramer et al. 1967, Rylander 1967, Cohen 1968). In the present investigation a rating scale, was designed for the study of amphetamine psychosis in 15 intravenous abusers. A preliminary report of this work has been given earlier (Jönsson and Gunne 1969).

When von Meduna in 1935 introduced convulsion therapy, his hypothesis that schizophrenia and epilepsy were incompatible diseases suggested that convulsion therapy was applicable only to cases of schizophrenia. Similarly, Sakel, when introducing insulin shock, proposed it as a treatment to be applied essentially to schizophrenia. It is thus not surprising that most psychiatrists at first devoted their main attention to comparing the results obtained from treating schizophrenia by these alternative methods of “shock” rather than in studying their effects on other forms of psychosis. However, Low and co-workers (1) in 1938 reported having obtained very encouraging results from giving metrazol-induced convulsions to a group of sixteen manic-depressive cases, and very shortly afterwards Bennett (2) issued a preliminary report on ten cases of the depressive psychosis in which he stated he had found a remarkable improvement following cardiazol convulsion treatment.