Data from Chapman's anhedonia and perceptual aberration scales are presented for groups of schizophrenics and hospital staff control subjects. Differences between the two groups are found for both anhedonia scales and for the perceptual aberration scale, but the difference for physical anhedonia is only marginally significant. The anhedonia scales do not differentiate between the two groups sufficiently well to be useful diagnostically.

A man temporarily developed an organic personality change, psychosis and epilepsy after a frontal lobe operation for a subarachnoid haemorrhage. While affected, he set fire to his house. The arson is thought to have been a direct result of a seizure. The case and its legal management are discussed.

There have been reports of the association of alterations in the divalent cation content of plasma with depressive illness. Coirault and colleagues (1959) found increased ionized calcium levels despite decreased total plasma calcium concentration in patients recovered from depression. More recently, Frizel and colleagues (1969) have reported normal plasma ionized and total calcium levels both before and after recovery from depression.

We explored the role of baseline characteristics of 105 patients who presented with fatigue in primary care in determining outcome following either graded exercise or cognitive–behavioural therapy. Meeting the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome was the most powerful predictor of poor outcome and this negative effect was enhanced by greater functional impairment or greater perceived negative consequences, but was not further enhanced by both.

The problem of the differentiation between neurosis and psychosis has given rise to much confused literature and discussion. This is particularly true of those cases in which anxiety or depression is the outstanding feature of the illness, and which do not show any gross symptoms of psychotic illness. Such confusion as exists appears to be due to a variety of causes. For example, the social implications of psychotic illness tend to favour a diagnosis of neurosis in many of the milder cases. Again, the same diagnostic terms are often used with quite different meanings by different workers. An even more potent cause of difficulty is the temptation to search for fixed disease entities in psychiatry which can be sharply separated one from the other.

Intellectual disability (also known as learning disability in UK health services) and autism are distinct from the serious mental illnesses for which the Mental Health Act is designed to be used. Their inclusion in the definition of mental disorder is discriminatory, resulting in unjust deprivations of liberty. Intellectual disability and autism should be excluded from the Mental Health Act.

It is increasingly recognised that the preconception period is a window of opportunity to intervene to improve outcomes for women and the next generation. The importance of preconception mental health and comorbidity problems has not traditionally been taken into account by policy makers or mental health service providers. We argue that by addressing preconception physical and mental health in men and women, medical health professionals could improve health outcomes across the whole life course.

The principles of measuring anxiety are reviewed. Scales of anxiety differ in their time focus: state-anxiety scales measure the present or recent past, whereas trait-anxiety scales measure the ways the subject generally feels. Commonly used scales have adequate validity, but there is incomplete agreement on the boundaries of the construct of anxiety. There are consistent differences in sensitivity among anxiety scales, and they vary greatly in the number of items, number of cues and in the method of scoring. For self-rating scales a large number of items with only two cues (e.g. ‘yes’ and ‘no’), or only two scores for each item, increases the sensitivity of the scale for screening as well as for detecting differences between drug and placebo. A large number of cues decreases the sensitivity of a self-rating scale; it is unknown whether a large number of cues is advantageous in group research, but a small number of items is adequate both for rating and self-rating scales.

Refining the cultural safety concept to include an acknowledgement of both the discomfort inherent in training and care and the time needed to overcome multiple layers of oppression may partially buffer the feelings of failure or fraud that often arise from unrealistic expectations regarding equity, diversity and inclusion policies.

I am very grateful to the Committee of this Conference for giving me the opportunity to say a few words about the aims and methods of social surveys. I must, however, confess that I was somewhat astonished when I got the invitation, because everybody interested in this topic knows that the most eminent experts within this field are English. It would, therefore, seem unnecessary to ask a foreigner to read this paper, and after having heard the lectures of Dr. Lewis and Dr. Blacker I feel still more convinced that I shall not be able to add anything of importance to their excellent presentations.

The pineal gland, Descartes' seat of the soul, was variously considered until recently as a somewhat mysterious vestigial organ, or simply a good neuroradiological marker. The former point of view arose partly out of ignorance and the curious mythical associations related to its function as a ‘third eye’ in some lower vertebrates. The latter is due to the calcification which is present in most adult human pineal glands.

Deep muscular relaxation is an active component of systematic desensitization therapy. Most behaviour therapists induce relaxation in their patients by an abbreviated version of a technique originally described by Jacobson (4) called progressive relaxation. This report concerns a new way to facilitate deep muscular relaxation which is efficient, reliable and convenient.

The proportion of persons with neurotic personalities in flats was not significantly greater than that in houses. Extraversion was not correlated with psychiatric illness or with the tendency to consult a doctor. Flat dwelling, but not house dwelling, was sufficient stress for neurotic personalities to cause, among them, an increase in clinical psychiatric illness. The resulting increase in the overall level of psychiatric illness of all flat dwellers was too small to be significantly greater than that of all house dwellers.