The diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis in mentally handicapped people can be easily overlooked, partly because its presentation differs from that in people with normal intelligence. This report illustrates some of the difficulties involved in making the diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis in a mentally handicapped person and in planning for her future care.

Clovoxamine, an inhibitor of neuronal uptake of both serotin and noradrenaline, was compared with doxepin in depressed patients over four weeks. Antidepressant efficacy was comparable for both drugs, but clovoxamine might have a special degree of efficacy for patients with more severe depressive illnesses.

The action of viloxazine on libido and sex drive was evaluated with a randomised controlled double-blind trial against placebo on a population of 26 male out-patients affected by primary depression (DSM III). Modifications in the sexual sphere were assessed by the ad hoc inclusion of a series of items in the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale. Thus modified, the scale was administered at the beginning and the end of a four-week trial period. Viloxazine proved to have a considerable disinhibiting effect, whose principal expression level was a return to pre-depression levels of frequency in sexual relations.

The prolactin response after ECT in ten female melancholic patients correlated significantly to their prolactin response to i.v. TRH. These findings may suggest an underlying common mechanism between TRH and ECT regarding their PRL releasing properties.

The AMDP-System has been developed in Europe by the Association for Methodology and Documentation in Psychiatry the standardised documentation of psychiatric files and for the measurement of change in drug trials. It is increasingly used in the French-speaking and German-speaking countries by clinical psychopharmacologists for teaching classical German psychopathological concepts to students and for the multicentre and multifactorial evaluation of drug changes. The AMDP-System consists of three anamnestic forms and of two comprehensive rating scales on present psychopathology (100 items+ write-in items) and somatic complaints (40 items+write-in items).

A double-blind cross-over trial of depot flupenthixol in recurrent manic depressive psychosis was carried out. Ail patients continued on lithium. Eleven patients completed the two-year trial. Flupenthixol appeared to have no prophylactic effect.

Bilateral parietal lobe atrophy was revealed by CT scan in a 48 year-old man, with a history of learning difficulties since childhood, encopretic up to the age of eight, and left-handedness. Nevertheless, he earned his living as a skilled potter, though unable to cope with the administration of the business.

Milton H. Erickson, MD. was born in 1901 in a cabin in a desolate part of Nevada where his father was a gold miner. When he reached school age his family returned to rural Wisconsin, where they had previously lived. As a child Milton experienced the world differently from other children in that he had red-green colour blindness, was tone deaf and, probably, also dyslexic. At 17 he had a severe attack of poliomyelitis. He was extensively paralysed but rehabilitated himself, largely by his own efforts, during the following two years.