Tests of both structure and function of the corpus callosum have revealed abnormalities in schizophrenic patients. One such functional test employed lateralised Stroop stimuli presented tachistoscopically, to measure the transfer of interference and facilitation between the cerebral hemispheres. An attempt was made to relate indices of callosal transfer to clinical and demographic variables, including family history, as well as to indices of brain morphology. The latter included ventricle: brain ratio (VBR) measured by computed tomography (CT) scanning on 31 DSMIII schizophrenics, and the cross-sectional area of the corpus callosum from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), obtained from 20 of these patients. VBR did not relate to functional measures; however, anterior callosal area correlated with indices of callosal connectivity. Patients with auditory hallucinations had smaller anterior callosal areas and tended to show less connectivity. The results show links between functional and structural measures of the corpus callosum, but their precise nature remains unclear.

Blood was drawn from 18 inpatients fullfilling the DSMIII criteria for schizophrenia and their 15 age- and sex-matched clinically infection-free controls before and after neuroleptic treatment. Blood films were stained with MGG solution, mixed, and subsequently read in random order by one observer. The lymphocytes were examined by light microscopy and classified into six types: normal lymphocytes, Downey type I atypical lymphocytes, Downey type III atypical lymphocytes, stress lymphocytes, plasmocytoid lymphocytes, and large granular lymphocytes. Downey type I and III atypical lymphocytes were classified into small, medium, and large lymphocytes. Schizophrenic patients had significantly more Downey type III medium size cells before treatment (p = 0.019 before treatment and p = 0.056 after treatment) and less Downey type I small size cells (p = 0.113 before treatment and p = 0.026 after treatment). Our study supports the idea of a possible subgroup of schizophrenia exhibiting immunological aberrations. In the present study, we found morphologically more specified cells which could be involved in this alteration.

The main finding of a former Spanish multicenter study (SMS) on the effectiveness of naltrexone maintenance in heroin addicts, was the high retention rate achieved at 24 weeks of follow-up since naltrexone induction (40%). The authors claimed this rate was one of the highest ever reported in the literature for a non-selected sample of opiate addicts and discussed the possible relevance of a set of variables — like motivations and expectations due to a new treatment — on the findings. To assess the possible effects of these variables, we have compared the retention rates in two similar naltrexone programmes. The first programme (hospital sample) included 56 individuals who were also included in the SMS where they accounted for 37% of the total sample. That programme was developed formerly to the naltrexone marketing. The second sample (ambulatory sample) included 67 individuals who were recruited at least a year apart since naltrexone marketing was approved by the Spanish Health Boards. The time-lag between the beginnig of both studies was in the range of 15 to 25 months.

The subjects in both programmes had similar distributions regarding age (p = 0.27), sex (p = 0.79), weeks on treatment after naltrexone induction (p = 0.20), and program compliance (p = 0.78). The retention rates evaluated over a period of 24 weeks were also similar (p = 0.45). The only difference appeared at 12 weeks of follow-up, showing in higher retention the hospital sample than the ambulatory sample (+23%; p < 0.05). The results are discussed according to other studies and it is concluded that findings reported in the former SMS and in this study are not unusual but compatible with recent research. Also underlined is the potential importance of naltrexone as a concomitant treatment for extinguishing high risk behaviours and the conditional stimuli associated with treatment relapse in heroin addicts.

Psychoanalytical, behavioural and cognitive theories assume a continuous process in the development of self-acceptance as an important psychological variable by parent-child interaction during childhood and adolescence. The objective of the present study was to investigate the relationships between perceived parental rearing behaviour and self-acceptance in psychiatric inpatients. The results of extreme group comparisons pointed to the reciprocal discriminative power of parental rearing factors and self-acceptance scores, supporting the hypothesis of a continuous process in the development of self-acceptance and mood traits. Perceived parental rearing predicted aspects of psychopathology in adulthood. The effects of maternal and paternal behaviour appeared to be gender-specific. Alternative interpretations of these findings are discussed.

Borna disease virus (BDV) appears to cause meningoencephalitis and schizophreniform psychosis in sporadic cases according to earlier cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) inoculation experiments (Rott et al, 1991). However, CSF parameters in BDV seropositive psychiatric patients proved nearly all normal; only the most sensitive CSF/serum index I-BDV for intrathecally produced BDV specific IgG was pathologic in 10.5–29.0% (according to different methodological limits) of patients. An increase in sensitivity was attempted to detect specific IgG in CSF in a part of the cases by concentration. Concentration procedure does not significantly increase methodological bias according to a statistical analysis of the results. Our findings support the hypothesis that BDV may cause or contribute to the pathogenesis of a diagnostically broad pattern of psychiatric syndromes. The occurence of a spectrum of diagnoses is expected from non-specificity of psychiatric symptoms in other infectious diseases of the brain as well as from results in experimental Borna disease (BD) in animals, when a majority of the animals showed rather unspecific symptomatology due to slight, preferentially limbic encephalitis. Slight deficiencies from an earlier BDV infection could explain continuing symptoms in a part of the cases. Recurrences years after infection are well known in experimental and natural BD in animals. It remains open, whether this mechanism could play a more prominent role in a form of “symptomatic” cyclothymia and “symptomatic” schizophrenia, although the results of CSF investigations are more clear in BDV seropositive patients with major psychoses.

Sleep disorder is a widespread chronic disease. Its treatment and the disease itself causes losses to society, eg treatment cost and cost of sick leaves. On the other hand an appropriate treatment increases patients' quality of life and work productivity. The basic methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of treating sleep disorders are described.

Sleep problems are classical complaints in depressed patients. Polygraphie recordings performed in drug free depressed patients during an acute episode of the illness have allowed description of sleep continuity, architecture and REM sleep disturbances. While the specificity of these abnormalities is not fully established, these perturbations appear to be core symptoms of the depressive episode. Antidepressants drugs, whatever their pharmacological profile have been shown to suppress or at least to reduce REM sleep. However, the effects of these drugs on sleep continuity and architecture seem to be related to their specific pharmacological action.

Whether studies agree or disagree on the positive-negative dichotomy in schizophrenia, the relevance of a third component, disorganization, remains a point of debate. Disorganization, as expressed by the scale for the assessment of negative symptoms and positive symptoms (SANS-SAPS) and the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) principal-component analyses, could be considered as permanent and determinant a dimension as the positive and negative components. The aim of this study therefore was to determine whether this disorganization, with the negative and positive components, is stable and has the same composition in the acute and postacute phases of illness. This study was carried out in 57 patients, broadly defined by at least one of four diagnostic criteria (American Psychiatric Association, Langfeldt, Carpenter and Schneider), established with a computerized checklist, and evaluated with SANS-SAPS and PANSS. Principal component analyses (PCA) of these scales were performed at admission and discharge from hospital.

The PCA of SANS-SAPS displayed a 3-factor solution, regardless of the phase of illness (acute or postacute), showing that the negative, positive and disorganization components were stable. The PCA of PANSS yielded negative and positive components perfectly stable over time and a disorganization component whose composition varied between admission and discharge. At admission, this component included the conceptual disorganization item negatively correlated with one of depression. At discharge, this disorganization component included two additional items, autistic preoccupation and mannerisms and one depression component appeared. The instability of the PCA of PANSS could express the role played by the phase of illness; in an acute phase, this disorganization component was constituted by more “positive” items such as grandiosity, unusual thought content and active social avoidance whereas in the postacute phase, it included items that reflected more the chronicity of the illness, such as mannerisms and autistic preoccupation. Moreover, the depressive item appeared, in the postacute phase, in a specific depressive component. This result could be due to the fact that depressive symptoms cannot be expressed when positive symptoms are very severe, which explains why no depressive components were shown during the acute phase.

The outcome of treatment in schizophrenia is best considered as a multidimensional construct. This report lists thirteen categories of outcome measures that have been studied in schizophrenia research, among the most important of which are psychopathology, cognitive function, interpersonal social function, quality of life, extrapyramidal function, the suicide tendeccy and the need for hospitalisation. Clozapine is effective in achieving improved outcome in all these measures in a high percentage of neuroleptic-resistant patients. Ninety-two of 180 (51.1%) clozapine-treated neuroleptic-resistant patients achieved a decrease of 20% in Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale total scores at six weeks using the 0–6 scaling system. Cognitive function contributes importantly to overall function for schizophrenia. Clozapine has been shown to improve some types of cognition in schizophrenia, especially semantic memory and some tests of executive function. Clozapine has also been shown to decrease the incidence of suicide and hospitalisation. The task of deciding which therapies to use in schizophrenia should encompass the spectrum of benefits of each therapy, their risks and costs, in relation to all alternatives.

The cases of two borderline patients are presented, dexamethasone suppression test (DST) positive and refractory to many therapeutic interventions and treated successfully with high doses of amitriptyline (225 and 200 mg/day, respectively). During the therapeutic intervention, the psychopathological condition of the patients was evaluated using Hamilton's rating scale for depression and a constructed scale based on items 11, 12 and 13 (dysphoria, anger, sense of emptiness, boredom, anhedonia) of the diagnostic interview for borderline patients.

Lexical decision tasks were used in 17 schizophrenic subjects and 11 control subjects, to evaluate the so-called automatic priming of semantic links, and the controlled processes which involve longer lexical anticipation strategies. In this type of trial, inhibition in the recognition of the target word, when the preceding priming word is not semantically linked to it, indicates the activation of such controlled processes. Postulating that patients in the schizophrenic group were heterogeneous in terms of cognition, we compared the resultant scores in two subtypes of schizophrenic patients: paranoid and hebephrenic (CIM-9 criteria). The study demonstrated that there was a difference in performance between the schizophrenic subtypes. Although these findings need to be confirmed, they demonstrate the necessity of determining individual profiles of patients entering the trial, to take into account those of their phenomenological differences that may correspond to differences in cognitive functioning. The results indicate an absence of inhibition, but only in the paranoid group. In these subjects, results were consistent with the hypothesis of a failure to set up controlled processes rather than a stronger “automatic” activation of the semantic links. However, as the results were not significant, the hypothesis remains open to further investigation. The reasons for the nonsignificance of the results and alternative hypotheses are discussed.

The objective of the present study was to evaluate emotional disturbances and psychopathological symptoms in early stages of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Seventy-one homosexual subjects, positive to HIV and two groups of HIV-negative subjects (32 homosexuals and 26 heterosexuals) were evaluated in a semi-structured interview by two trained raters. The results showed the presence of emotional perturbations already in asymptomatic HIV-positive individuals even in the absence of caracterized depression and/or anxiety. This emotional deficit seemed to be more important in more advanced stages of the disease. Depressive and anxious symptoms appeared to be slightly but significantly present in both groups of homosexual men. This emotional deficit could be the reflect of an adaptative process to the threatening consequences of HIV-infection. Emotional perturbations, even mild should not be neglected, because their reduction contributes to the psychological well being of HIV-positive subjects.

Chronic illness in a child requires successful organisational and emotional adjustment of the child and the family. The way in which the child and the family adapt to the illness will affect their psychological well-being and their quality of life. This review summarizes recent research findings on the relationship between illness factors, individual and family functioning, coping strategies and psychosocial adjustment. The findings are presented within the framework of three complementary theoretical models: the family developmental approach; the psychosocial typology of illnesses; and the process model of stress and coping. These models are useful for a better understanding of the complex interactions between illness, family and coping and offer to the professionals engaged in the care of chronically sick children, guidelines for assessment and the development of intervention programs. The review starts with examining the impact of chronic illness on the psychosocial adjustment of the sick child, his/her siblings and parents. Then psychosocial Stressors and risk factors in terms of illness and family related characteristics are discussed. Coping resources and strategies are presented which have been shown to be related to child and parental adjustment; and finally, successful intervention programs are described.

One hundred-four depressed patients treated with amitriptyline (mean dosage: 163 mg/d; mean plasma level: 239 ng/ml) and 52 normal control subjects matched for age and sex underwent a standardized cardiovascular test battery (various autonomic cardiac parameters, which are largely independent from heart rate, namely the coefficients of variation (CV) while resting and during deep respiration, a spectral analysis of heart rate, the Valsalva ratio, and a posture index were determined). The tests included the determination of time- and frequency-derived measurements of heart rate variability (HRV), which is rather independent from heart rate. As compared to the controls the patients showed a significant plasma concentration-dependent decrease of R-R variation in the electrocardiogram (p < 0.0001), while their heart rate was significantly elevated (p < 0.0001). The markedly reduced parameters of sinus arrhythmia in amitriptyline treated patients are suggested to be mainly due to the anticholinergic effect of this drug, although it can not be excluded that the affective disorder itself might be associated with low heart rate variability. The results indicate that autonomic heart rate parameters are a valuable tool for the detection of tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) intake in unconscious patients, especially in intensive care and emergency wards.

A thirty-eight year old woman, suffering from schizoaffective disorder for approximately 17 years, improved significantly with the association of clozapine (CPZ) and nimodipine.

Little consensus exists on the risk of benzodiazepine (BZD) dependence. We investigated how often BZD dependence and related concepts have been defined in the literature on BZD effects in humans. In addition, the definitions of BZD dependence were compared in order to assess the similarity of contents. From a total of 250 papers (published between 1988 and 1991) 51 provided 126 dependence-related definitions. Six studies referred to the DSM definitions and one to the WHO definition. The obsolete concept of addiction was frequently defined (n=13), with little consensus about its meaning. Psychological and physical dependence were defined fairly often (n=29), also with low levels of consensus. We conclude that the discussion on the risk of BZD dependence would be well-served by attempting to improve consensus first. This may lead to more meaningful data on the incidence, prevalence and relevant co-factors of BZD dependence. An outline for criteria for benzodiazepine dependence is presented.

From 20,000 households regularly surveyed by a national survey institute (Sofres), two groups were selected and questioned (using a 23-item questionnaire) about sleep vigilance and quality of life. The first group was composed of insomniacs using zopiclone for the last 12 months and no other CNS treatments (167 subjects). The second group was composed of 381 “good sleepers” selected as having no or occasionally one sleep disturbance in the last 12 months. No difference was found between the two groups in average total sleep time. Sleep disturbances were statistically equal in the two groups except for difficulties in initiating sleep which is more present for zopiclone users (13% vs 3%). Vigilance was mostly comparable in both groups.Five aspects of quality of life explored by the questionnaires (the professional, relational and sentimental, domestic, leisure and safety aspects) appeared to be comparable in the two groups.

In an open prospective study, the stabilizing effects of carbamazepine on agitation, impulsivity and affective lability were investigated in 15 severely demented patients, who had failed to respond to prior neuroleptic medication. Because of leukopenia and allergic reactions in two subjects, carbamazepine treatment was discontinued. In nine patients a clinically relevant improvement was observed.

Platelet monoamine oxidase (MAO) activities were assessed in 82 patients, 57 females and 25 males, who were admitted to the medical ward of a general hospital after a suicide attempt. The enzyme activities were compared to the activities of healthy subjects, 35 females and 26 males. In addition, MAO activities were analyzed in relation to sex, psychiatric diagnosis, mode of attempt, drugs ingested, and previous attempts. Compared to normal controls, only female patients showed lower MAO activities. In the male population, lower activities were found in the subgroup of patients who had made previous attempts. In relation to diagnosis, analysis performed in the female population revealed lower MAO activities in the dysthymic and personality disorder, and not in the adjustment or major affective disorder subgroups. MAO activities were not related to the violent mode of attempt, the type of medication used, or the score in the Beck Suicidal Intent scale. The finding of low platelet MAO activities in dysthymic disorder, indicates the need for further studies of biological variables in this underdiagnosed and undertreated diagnostic group.