A case is described of NMS during treatment with sulpiride. The subsequent psychosis resolved during treatment with carbamazepine. It is proposed that this patient may have suffered from a supersensitivity psychosis, and that resolution of her post-NMS psychosis could have been spontaneous.

Bereavement studies which have correlated mental illness and other pathology with the recent or past deaths of parents have relied on the subject's memory for ascertaining parent death dates. Data given by subjects can be wrong, because of faulty recollection or deliberate misinformation given to conceal something felt to be shameful, such as illegitimacy.

Psychiatrists who have written about the Australian Aborigines have been less concerned with the psychiatry of this people than with the significance of their practices and beliefs for psychological and psychoanalytic theory. (Freud, 1913; Roheim, 1945; Fry, 1953). This outlook is reflected in the subsidiary title of Freud's Totem and Taboo: “Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics”. It was hoped that the analogies between “primitive” practices such as sub-incision or totemism and the repressed complexes of modern civilized peoples might shed light into the recesses of the modern mind.

The dexamethasone suppression test was administered to 12 mentally handicapped depressed patients. One of the four patients with major depressive disorder, but none of those with other diagnoses, failed to suppress Cortisol production. The International Classification of Diseases and the Newcastle Diagnostic Index were found to be unreliable for use with severely mentally handicapped patients. Modifications are proposed which would allow the Research Diagnostic Criteria and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression to be applied to patients with any degree of mental handicap.

This paper describes some of the characteristics of children included in the National Survey of Health and Development who have been cautioned by the police or come before the Courts before their seventeenth birthdays.

Impulsivity is a multidimensional construct, including impulsive decision-making and impulsive action, representing relatively independent neurocircuitries. ADHD is treated with methylphenidate, a drug that binds to dopamine transporters. This study in 24 adult male patients with ADHD shows that dopamine transporter occupancy by methylphenidate in the putamen correlates with improvements in cognitive but not in motor impulsivity.

The Editor's initiative in seeking this Editorial was inspired no doubt by a number of recent cases and events in which the behaviour of those concerned seems to have defied rational explanation, and the power of ‘evil’ has been invoked in order to provide one. Perhaps the most compelling was that of the trial for murder of two ten-year-old boys for the murder of the infant James Bulger.

The effects of ECT on plasma insulin and glucose were assessed in 20 depressed patients, during the first, third and fifth session of ECT. After each administration of ECT there was a significant rise in blood glucose and plasma insulin levels, both of which peaked at 15 minutes. Insulin responses tended to attenuate over the course of ECT, whereas the glucose responses were similar for all three treatments. ECT was effective in all patients, although two months after the last treatment nine patients had partially relapsed (Hamilton score > 15). Those who relapsed had a more attenuated insulin response at the fifth treatment than those who had remained well, which suggests that insulin response to ECT may be predictive of clinical outcome.

After reviewing the literature pertaining to intellectual deterioration, Yates (1956) concluded that the major determinant of declining vocabulary in hospitalized persons, especially schizophrenic patients, was the length of stay in hospital. The studies on which Yates based his hypothesis were cross-sectional; that is, groups of patients admitted for relatively short periods of time were compared with patients admitted for longer periods. Two studies of schizophrenics showed that long-term patients did not perform as well as short-term patients on vocabulary subscales (Nelson, 1953; Rabin, King and Ehrmann, 1955). Similar decline was noted both in long-term epileptic patients (Capps, 1939) and in non-psychotic residents of old-age homes (Fox and Birren, 1949).

This paper contrasts the usual scoring of the GHQ-30 with scoring based upon a criterion approach applied to only 12 of the GHQ items that takes account of the ‘diagnostic significance’ of the chosen items. Repeat assessments with this shorter form of the questionnaire (the l-GHQ), coupled with procedures to assess change, can be used to provide summary measures of symptom course in those research situations where available interview time precludes the use of more formal assessment methods.

The methods of treatment employed for most forms of psychiatric disorder are still largely empirical. Furthermore, they are subject to powerful socio-cultural influences. Hence, it is not surprising that examination of medical practice in different countries reveals wider variation in the treatment of psychiatric disorder than in that of most other forms of morbidity (Shepherd, 1962). To establish the patterns of variation, and to assess their importance, it is necessary to develop techniques which permit direct comparison between the therapeutic practices of representative national groups of psychiatrists. This cannot be an easy matter, since in addition to difficulties of language and protocol there are problems specific to the subject of enquiry. There is as yet no internationally accepted nomenclature for psychiatric disorders, and perusal of the available prevalence statistics suggests that there must be considerable variation in the diagnostic criteria recognized by clinical psychiatrists of different nationalities (Lin and Standley, 1962). Moreover, clinicians whose chief concern is with the treatment and management of individual patients, in part through the manipulation of inter-personal relations, may be reluctant to accept any simple, mutually exclusive classification of their therapeutic techniques.

Although ward behaviour rating scales for use with long-stay psychiatric patients by nurses have been in existence for many years, their content tends to reflect the opinions of psychiatrists and psychologists rather than those of nurses. An analysis of five commonly used rating scales illustrates the lack of agreement on what should be included. The opinions of 76 nurses from four separate hospitals were sought, using a 34-item questionnaire, to establish what areas of content were considered important in nursing practice. Apart from agreement on general content, consideration should also be given to the presentation of individual items of ward rating scales.

The use of feedback techniques as therapeutic tools has increased quite considerably during the last decade (Berger, 1970). Techniques such as videotape and tape recorder playback have been used with a wide rage of patients, and to secure effects such as ‘overcoming resistance’, ‘evoking insight’, ‘increasing motivation for psychotherapy’ and ‘shocking alcoholics back to reality’. The general strategy has involved making a recording of the patient's behaviour, or a sample of therapeutic interaction; the recording is then played back to the participants and often used as a basis for discussion and further treatment. In spite of the enthusiasm about the value of these techniques, empirical and scientific evidence for their efficacy is almost entirely absent (Bailey and Sowder, 1970).

Although a large growing literature indicates that monosymptomatic hypochondriacal psychosis is more common than previously thought, little contribution has been made from psychiatrists working in developing countries. Fifteen patients are described who presented with the delusion of emitting a foul smell.

Transient trazodone-induced hypomanic symptoms occurred in three depressed patients. Trazodone therapy was continued or reinstated shortly after the hypomanic episode without further evidence of hypomania.