This case-note survey compares a group of Asian children referred to child psychiatry and guidance clinics in Bolton with a control group of white children referred to the same clinics. The proportion of Asian children was less than the proportion of Asian people in the general population. The proportion of Asian children coming from a broken home or a single-parent family was significantly lower than in the control group. Conduct disorders were more common in the control group and somatoform disorders were more common in the Asian group.

HLA status was asessed in matched groups of schizophrenics, 20 with and 20 without tardive dyskinesia. The antigen frequencies were also compared with that in a control sample. The anticipated excess of HLA-B44 was not confirmed. Pooled data displayed a shortfall of HLA-Cw7 and an excess of HLA-B44 in schizophrenics relative to population controls.

The neuropsychiatric changes in a Chinese patient suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy led to a difficult diagnosis. Polysomnography revealed sleep fragmentation and central apnoea.

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.

A patient given bismuth nitrate in the recommended dose range over 16 months developed panic attacks and a major depressive syndrome and, after 15 months, a myoclonic encephalopathy resembling Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. He recovered four months after bismuth had been discontinued. Bismuth preparations are becoming popular in the treatment of gastritis; close attention to neurological and psychiatric symptoms seems mandatory.

Hypersexuality and fetishism appeared in a patient with multiple sclerosis whose MRI scan showed frontal and temporal lesions. The hypersexuality may have been the presenting symptom of the multiple sclerosis.