Conditioning therapy has been widely applied in the treatment of certain kinds of neurotic illness.

The 16 PF was administered to 30 female attempted suicides and their spouses, to 20 male attempted suicides and their spouses and to 50 control men and their spouses. Both the female and male attempted suicides show personality disturbance, but there are also sex differences. The female attempted suicides and their spouses appear to share similar personality characteristics, but the spouses of male attempted suicides appear quite dissimilar from their husbands. The effect of the personality of the spouses is briefly discussed in the context of marital relationships of attempted suicides.

It was generally expected, before the actualities of war arrived, that not the least effect of it would be a shattering of the mental health of the civil population.

War on great cities was to be a particular application of what the war lords called the war of nerves. Propaganda, threats and their ultimate fulfilment with bombs and fire were to be the weapons of the future. With this in mind, arrangements were made to receive psychiatric casualties on the assumption that the civil population, untrained and unprofessional, would suffer in at least as large numbers as soldiers in the last war.

In a prospective, longitudinal study of high-risk offspring of schizophrenic mothers, of several dimensions of pre-morbid behaviour ‘peculiarity’ predicted subsequent schizophrenia or schizotypy. Peculiarity/eccentricity may represent a subtle marker of the schizophrenic genotype. ‘Pre-schizophrenics', as compared with ‘pre-schizotypes', were characterised by affective dyscontrol, reflected in less introverted and more disturbed behaviour.

The subversion of psychiatric intervention for political purposes in the USSR during the 1970s and 1980s resulted in both intra-psychic and subsequent adaptational dysfunction in those dissidents who physically survived it. Incarceration in special psychiatric hospitals subjected the inmates to a sense of helplessness under the control of a malevolent power, futility, despair, danger from close and contentious contact with hardened criminals and the violently insane, overdosage with mind-altering and body-distorting neuroleptic drugs, and a Kafkaesque ambiguity concerning the specific terms of institutionalisation. Discharge did not bring release from continued threats and the eroded social networks to which the inmates returned subjected them to a new set of stressors. While some families remained intact and provided necessary support during the re-entry period, many families had been destroyed either by the circumstances of the family member's incarceration or by the length of the victim's stay in the psychiatric hospital. Wives left, people died, friends deserted, jobs evaporated, and often there was not even a home to accept them. Social agencies were either hostile or indifferent to their plight. Many felt like they had been thrown overboard from a prison ship without a life preserver. It was the proverbial transition from the frying pan into the fire.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had negative mental health outcomes in populations, but the suicide numbers in Finland have remained unchanged compared with expected levels based on the pre-pandemic period. We included all deaths from suicide verified by the official cause-of-death investigations, including forensic autopsy with analysis of forensic toxicology samples, between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2020 in Finland. There was a decline in suicide incidence from 2016 to 2020 in men, and a declining tendency in suicide rates for every consecutive month during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The COVID-19 governmental policy responses do not seem to have led to an increase in suicide numbers.

A strong emphasis on individual psychopathology has informed much discussion on female crime, although more recent research has stressed its social setting and influences. Women commit all types of crime, although to a much lesser extent than men, particularly with regard to violent crime. Social and economic marginalisation is a significant factor in female crime. Criminal convictions seem to be more stigmatising for women. In court, women are treated as doubly deviant and their actions are explained in psychopathological terms. Because of the small numbers of women offenders, non-custodial and custodial provisions for them are inadequate. Although men are more likely to be victims of, for example, street crime, women express more fear of crime. One reason for this may be the prevalence of domestic crime committed by men against women (and children) that is underestimated in some surveys.

A 38-year-old patient, who can give the day of the week of any day this century, is described. He is believed to have been autistic in early childhood. The relationship of the autistic child and the adolescent idiot savant is discussed and brief reference made to the patient's method.

As highlighted in the recent systematic review by Stimpson et al (2002), we know little about the relative efficacies of the treatment interventions that are routinely deployed for those with depressive disorders that have not responded to standard, first-line treatment approaches. Accepted practice is, at best, systematic ‘trial and error’, with sequential antidepressant monotherapy and/or combinations of antidepressant drugs with ‘augmenting agents'. This haphazard medicinal approach to managing the patient with poorly responsive depressive disorder is compounded by the lack of available information on the effectiveness and optimal role for psychological treatment methods. Given the high prevalence of depressive disorders and their frequent presentation to both primary and secondary care health services, it is a source of embarrassment that we remain so ignorant. Nevertheless, it is against this backdrop of uncertainty that we must now evaluate the relative merits of a novel intervention that has captured considerable media and lay interest: vagus nerve stimulation (VNS™).

Problem.

The writer undertook to try out a number of mental tests on a group of senile patients and to submit a tentative battery for a further investigation of senescence.

Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped (1971) forecasts a diminution in the number of beds in hospitals for mental handicap. It can be achieved only by the admission of fewer new long-stay patients. This paper considers 50 new long-stay cases admitted to a hospital for mentally handicapped in the five years 1970 to 1974. Of these admissions 42 per cent were children, and of all the admissions 54 per cent had Wechsler intelligence quotients under 25. Further, 62 per cent of the admissions were for behaviour problems and 38 per cent were for physical infirmity and helplessness. It is concluded that there are some mentally handicapped people who have problems with which only a hospital can cope. The high nursing dependency and the profound mental retardation of a majority of the new long-stay patients present a formidable challenge.

Many patients with depressive illness also show considerable anxiety and agitation and often require a tranquillizer in addition to an anti-depressant drug. A new combination—Ro 4-6270 or Limbitrol Forte (Roche)—consisting of amitriptyline 25 mg.+chlordiazepoxide 10 mg. has recently become available for clinical trial. Both amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide are widely used as an anti-depressant and a tranquillizer respectively. Clinical trials by Harris (1960), Jenner et al. (1961) and Hordern et al. (1963) have confirmed the efficacy of these drugs. Karabanow (1962), Poldinger (1963), Tietzen (1964) and Haider (1967a) have reported the usefulness of the combination of amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide in depressive states, but none of these studies was adequately controlled. In a previous study (Haider, 1967b) I reported the efficacy of a combination of an anti-depressant and a tranquillizer in improving anxiety and agitation in depressive illness, more than one would expect with an anti-depressant alone. As the combination was compared with a placebo, it was not possible to state with any certainty what was the role of the tranquillizer in improving these symptoms.

Medical journals are enlivened by case reports of bizarre and unusual syndromes. Although somatic delusions are relatively common in schizophrenia, reports of hallucinations and delusions of bicephaly are rare. For a patient to attempt to remove a perceived second head by shooting and to survive the experience for more than two years may well be unique, and merits presentation.