Conversive hallucinations are rare in the psychiatric literature. The authors present a case which demonstrates the psychogenesis and phenomenology of conversive hallucinations in a young female patient.

Before a drug trial, researchers reasonably plan that participants will remain ignorant of which drug each patient is taking, reflected in the use of allegedly identical preparations. However, only rarely is this plan subjected to systematic scrutiny after the event, and our point of view is that this is unsatisfactory.

The Social Adjustment Scale Self-report (SAS-SR) was completed by chronic schizophrenics (N = 82) living in Nithsdale, in Dumfries and Galloway region. Relatives also assessed patients' adjustment. The questionnaire response indicated that scrutiny of the form by a professional immediately after completion is necessary. Patients' and relatives' assessment of the patients' overall adjustment correlated very closely, thus suggesting a schizophrenic can satisfactorily describe his own adjustment. The patients were less well adjusted than a normal community population in all areas except the parental role. The SAS-SR highlights for each individual where many of his problems lie, and therefore may act as a guide to specific rehabilitative measures.

The state of an individual's mental health depends on many factors. Determination of the importance of any particular factor within a population needs access to unbiased data. We used publicly available data-sets to investigate, at a population level, how surrogates of mental health covary with light exposure. We found strong seasonal patterns of antidepressant prescriptions, which show stronger correlations with day length than levels of solar energy. Levels of depression in a population can therefore be determined by proxy indicators such as web query logs. Furthermore, these proxies for depression correlate with day length rather than solar energy.

Thirty-two agoraphobic patients were randomly allocated to four groups and treated by repeated exposure to cine-films at twice weekly intervals for three weeks. Three of the groups saw the same cine-film, comprising a range of agoraphobic scenes, and a control group saw a potter working on his wheel. The three groups seeing the phobic cine-film included one who viewed it at an illumination level below the visual threshold (subliminal group), one seeing it under normal conditions (supraliminal group) and one which underwent graduated exposure from subliminal to supraliminal viewing levels as the study proceeded (faded group). The faded group showed significantly greater improvement than the control and supraliminal groups and this improvement was maintained over twelve weeks.

The invitation to give a commemorative lecture of such importance evokes feelings of gratitude and pleasure that a body as distinguished as your own should show interest in the work of one's collaborators. This is especially so for us because the field in which we work might seem, to superficial observation, to be remote from practical interests. It has long been our hope that by study of a relatively simple animal we might be able to discover some of the fundamental features of living memory systems, which have not yielded to investigation in mammals or man. Your interest encourages us to think that we may be on the right lines and I hope that in return it may be possible to tell you at least something of the principles that underlie the coding and storing of information in the nervous system. But the brain is a very complicated instrument and the problem is far from solution. The account that I shall give will be grossly over-simplified and will probably seem to present an absurdly static picture of what we all know to be a continually active and dynamic system.

Electronarcosis is the term applied to a sleep-like condition produced by the passage of an electric current through the central nervous system.

This subject should not be discussed, least of all in Scotland, without a tribute being paid to the work of Dr. Lewis Bruce, of Murthly, whose book, Studies in Clinical Psychiatry, published twenty-one years ago, is devoted to a consideration of the toxæmic causation of mental disorder.

A case of pericentric inversion chromosome 9 with an associated personality disorder is reported. There is justification for a more widespread cytogenetic screening of psychiatric disorders of this type.

Pseudocholinesterase activities and phenotypes have been determined in 103 affectively ill patients, 168 schizophrenics and 73 Huntington's disease sufferers and compared with those of a sample of healthy controls. The distributions of phenotypes in the patient samples did not differ significantly from those of the controls.

When corrections were made for sex, age and E1 phenotypes, the Huntington's disease patients showed a reduced level of cholinesterase activity. Normal levels were found in affective disorders and schizophrenia.

In a preliminary report (Brit. Med. Journ., 2, 310, 1940), two modifications were introduced in Sakel's technique for the insulin treatment of schizophrenia, with the primary object of continuing the treatment under wartime conditions. The first and most important of these was concerned with the saving of sugar. This simple method, by which glucose is given intravenously and is followed by a drink of potato soup as soon as the patient is awake, has already been fully described by us. We discovered incidentally that this method effected a saving of insulin amounting to 46.6 per cent. in seven patients. Various critics have asked why other workers have not effected a saving by using intravenous insulin. Further, we have been asked what advantages are to be gained by giving insulin intravenously apart from this saving of the drug; whether intravenous insulin adds any dangers to the treatment, and whether it brings about a remission in schizophrenia comparable with intramuscular insulin. We have had more than a year's experience with the use of intravenous insulin, and this paper aims at describing our first year of this experience and answering the questions set out above. We may mention that in 24 additional patients treated, an average saving of 28.3 per cent. of insulin has been effected.

As there is still considerable hesitancy in the adoption of this valuable form of therapy, I am glad to have an opportunity of stating the case for a more widespread application of prolonged narcosis to the manic-depressive disorders. A legitimate diversity of opinion exists as to the propriety of using any drug with a toxic action over a long period, especially so when it introduces an extraneous, and maybe serious, risk into a disease of itself non-fatal, and with a large recovery-rate. With attention to detail in the treatment, and with the addition of the Cardiff modification of prolonged narcosis, we are satisfied that toxic symptoms arising during the administration of somnifaine—the drug used—can be controlled, and the risk heretofore associated with this form of therapy eliminated.

Suicide, a common cause of death in many low- and middle-income countries, has often been viewed through a medical/psychiatric lens. Such perspectives medicalise social and personal distress and suggest individual and medication-based treatments. This editorial argues for the need to examine suicide from a public health perspective and suggests the need for population-based social and economic interventions.

Amphetamine-type stimulants are the second most widely used drugs in the world. Over prescription results in diversion for recreational use and the development of dependence. The internet plays a significant role in global misuse of amphetamine-type stimulants, permitting uncontrolled dispensing by online pharmacies and providing information on techniques for illicit manufacture.

Doctors have a deep-rooted sense of professional identity ‘the medical self’. This allows them to do the jobs society expects from them, but also acts as a barrier when seeking care when unwell. This article discusses how the medical self is formed drawing on psychoanalytic, anthropological and psychiatric literature.

The first recorded attempt to use carbon dioxide inhalation systematically as a form of psychiatric treatment was by Lovenhart et al. (1929). The subjects were catatonic schizophrenics and such modification as occurred was fleeting in nature.

In 1943 Meduna began to use carbon dioxide inhalation in the treatment of the neuroses and his efforts were described in a series of papers and developed in a monograph (1950). This contains a full description of the physiological and pharmacological effects of carbon dioxide upon nervous function and the technique of administration is described as are also the results in 100 patients. These results are taken as giving some support to a neurophysiological theory of the neuroses based on homeostatic and cybernetic considerations. Efforts were made to minimize the effects of “suggestion” and, although the difficulties are acknowledged, the following passage suggests that the author was reasonably satisfied with his precautions.