This study examines changes in language markers in patient and therapist speech over the course of a 12-session cognitive depression therapy. Sessions 4, 8 and 12 were analyzed for the following clinical and language indices:

– scores on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory.

– relative frequency of predicative verb categories, deictics, modalization and situation markers in patient and therapist speech (propositional analysis). The findings show that language indices change significantly and correlatively with therapeutic change, and can thus serve as one measure of the changes in the patient’s psychological organization brought about by cognitive depression therapy.

To study the reliability of two depression assessment scales, the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale and the Psychomotor Retardation Scale, 30 patients with depression according to Feighner's criteria were evaluated, by two groups of raters: 5 were trained psychiatrists or psychologists, and 6 were untrained raters. The experiment lasted three months. The patients were recorded on video-tape by two psychiatrists who did not take part in the experiment, during pre-designed interviews. Each scoring was discussed by the trained group but not by the untrained group. The Kappa test and the sign-test were used for the statistical analysis of global and itemized results, respectively. Intraclass coefficient Q3 was applied to global scores. With regard to global scores, there was no significant difference among the members of the trained group, who scored higher than those of the untrained group; a significant difference between some of the untrained raters, induced a significant difference with the trained group. With regard to each item of both scales, reliability appeared to be slight to moderate, and there was no significant difference between trained and inexpert raters. These results are discussed and modifications are proposed to improve the consistency of the two scales. The authors emphasize the necessity for therapeutic trials to be conducted with permanent groups of assessors who continue training even outside of trial procedures.

Two cases of bipolar psychosis presented a rapid manic switch following administration of tricyclic antidepressants. In both cases the oxidation capacity was genetically deficient. The role of oxidation deficit is discussed in the pathogenesis of switch process and preventive measures are considered.

The case of a woman presenting erotomania in the course of a loss-related depressive state is described. Clinical, biological and therapeutical characteristics highlight the role of mood in certain cases of erotomania and add support to previous accounts of the heterogeneity of this syndrome.

Disturbances in the verbal communication patterns of manic and schizophrenic patients have been identified as two tools borrowed from quantitative linguistics: the Cloze Procedure and the Type Token Ratio (TTR). The Cloze Procedure, which measures the communicability of a message, consists of suppressing systematically every “nth” word of a text and in asking raters to try and guess the missing words. The Cloze Score of each text is then evaluated. The TTR measures the index of repetitiveness of a text or, in other words, its verbal richness. The degree of communicability, or overall comprehension, and the index of verbal richness are obtained through the analysis of a corpus of oral texts which have been recorded and transcribed. The patients are all paired with suitable controls. It was shown that low Cloze Scores (CS) and low TTR identify schizophrenic patients, whereas low CS and high TTR indicate a manic state. Control subjects show both high CS and high TTR. These results suggest that the Cloze Procedure linked with TTR can provide substantial aid to the differential diagnosis of mania and schizophrenia.