This paper reports a test of the hypothesis that winter birth is a risk factor for childhood psychosis. All psychotic children (n = 208) admitted to a day-treatment facility in Paris from 1960 through to 1986 were compared with 1040 controls matched by sex and year of birth. Risk ratio estimates were computed for each month, and a significant increase was observed for boys born in December. This association was stronger in some years than in others. The fact that there were no excesses in contiguous months detracts from the persuasiveness of this association.

In his monumental work on the history of dynamic psychiatry (1970), Henri Ellenberger has traced the origin of the modern depth psychologies back into the mists of time. Both ills of the body and ills of the mind were originally handled by the priest-physician of primitive societies along much the same lines. But there came a parting of the ways. Glimmerings of an empirical approach to the external world led to some degree of objectivity and to the primordial elements of science. Some physical illnesses could be traced to physical causes, and an understanding of causation led in course of time to rational therapy along physical lines. But mental illnesses remained refractory. It was only in a small area of their vast extent that their causes could be attributed to bodily conditions and thereby to physical causes. Over a great reach of time up to the present day, or at least till yesterday, it was generally believed that, as bodily illnesses had physical causes, the illnesses of the mind must have psychological causes. It proved beyond the powers of priests or physicians to identify them; and there was no way of accounting for the variable course, outcome and responsiveness to treatment of mental disorders.

The frequency and distribution of negative symptoms in a sample of 40 patients admitted to hospital with RDC-definite schizophrenia were examined. There was a highly significant positive correlation between negative symptom scores obtained using three different rating scales, but the presence of negative symptoms was not significantly related to duration of illness or number of episodes of illness. These findings do not support a model of negative symptoms being the consequence of schizophrenic relapse, but are in favour of their being an integral component of the schizophrenic syndrome, as salient in the first as in later episodes.

Section 54 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act, 1960, enables a court to remand to hospital for psychiatric examination and report persons charged with an offence who also appear to be mentally disordered. This article reviews this section of the Act in its practical aspects as experienced by the consultant staff of one Scottish mental hospital during the two-year period 1965–6.

The cloze procedure was used to examine predictability in speech samples from schizophrenic, depressive, manic, schizoaffective and normal subjects. Each speech sample was also rated for particular indices of thought disorder using the Andreasen Scale for the Assessment of Thought, Language and Communication. Schizophrenics were found to be less predictable than other patient groups or normals. Depressives were found to be the most predictable. Correlational analyses of cloze scores and specific thought disorder ratings suggest that reduced predictability is associated with traditional indicators of thought disorder.

The cerebral vascular transit time of 17 patients with presenile dementia of the Alzheimer type (ATD), nine abstinent patients with alcoholic Korsakoff's psychosis (KOR), and ten age-matched controls was determined by the bolus intravenous injection of pertechnetate. A gamma camera was used to estimate the median transit time (MTT) of the radioactive bolus in a planar (non-tomographic) projection normal to the vertex. The spread of the bolus arriving at the aortic arch was measured independently by a single external detector over the chest, and correction made for the transit time of this input function in calculating the net MTT for the head. Both ATD and KOR groups showed lengthened net MTTs, compatible with reduced cerebral blood flow, and which were correlated with reduced cognitive function. It is concluded that the method employed gives a simple, inexpensive estimate of function-related blood flow to the brain in presenile dementia.

This report describes a clinical trial in which pericyazine and chlorpromazine were used with 45 disturbed patients resident in a hospital for the mentally subnormal. The patients, who comprised a clinically heterogeneous sample, were randomly allocated by the hospital pharmacist to two major groups; in one, half the patients were given pericyazine for a 12-week period and an inert preparation for a further 12-week period while the remaining patients had the inert preparation during the first period and pericyazine during the second. In the other group, which was given chlorpromazine, the same procedure was followed. Prior to the trial proper, there was a six-week period during which all drugs except anti-convulsants were tapered off. All preparations were in syrup form and were indistinguishable from each other by taste or smell. Only the pharmacist was aware of what syrup a given patient received.

Oxypertine (also known as WIN 18,501–2) is a member of a new series of indolylalkylphenyl-piperazines synthesized by Archer et al (1). It resembles serotonin in respect of its indole nucleus, and the piperazine side-chain indicates a structural relationship with some of the major phenothiazines. Pharmacological studies by Wylie and Archer (17) showed oxypertine to have tranquillizing properties, and following preliminary human tolerance investigations (15) the psychotherapeutic nature of the agent was investigated by various workers in the United States and Europe.

The two studies described here were concerned with the effect of intravenous sodium amytal on autonomic and muscle activity in groups of female patients admitted to the Bethlem Royal Hospital with a primary depressive illness. The first aimed to repeat certain aspects of the work of Shagass et al. (1956) on sleep thresholds in which reactions to sodium amytal were correlated with clinical groupings. The clinical findings of this experiment have already been reported (Martin and Davies, 1962), and its results suggested some methodological problems which prompted a second experiment employing a modified experimental design.

A case of complete Ganser syndrome resolved after one week, but was immediately followed by a major depressive episode. The two disorders had a common cause, which is best encapsulated in a psychodynamic formulation.

Research relating brain stem stimulation and cortical selectivity by Lindsley (1957) led Venables (1963) to utilize a score from a perceptual discrimination task (two-flash fusion threshold, T.F.T.) to examine hypotheses relating arousal level to perceptual dysfunction and schizophrenic symptoms. Other work failed to confirm the results (Hume and Claridge, 1965), possibly due to the unsuitable method of determining T.F.T., a method of constant stimuli. The following experiments were based on the proposition that perceptual functioning is related to arousal level, and also attempted to resolve confusions arising from earlier studies by control of possible sources of error in the experimental situation.

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’.

There have been few cases of this syndrome published since the original papers by Kleine in 1925 and Levin in 1929. Critchley (1962) described 26 cases in his paper, in which he reviewed the condition fully. Earles (1965) mentioned 44 cases in the literature: a female case was recently discussed by Duffy and Davison (1968). According to Critchley the characteristic symptoms of this syndrome are ‘recurring episodes of undue sleepiness lasting some days, associated with an inordinate intake of food and often with abnormal behaviour’. Invariably male adolescents are affected; they are normal in between attacks and the condition tends to disappear in later life.