This is a report on offenders recommended for psychiatric treatment at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital during the three years 1966 to 1968.

Schizophrenic patients are referred to frequently as immunologically incompetent or poor antibody responders. However, if the literature comparing the response of immunized chronic schizophrenics with non-schizophrenic controls is examined, contradictory results may be found (1). Development of allergic responsiveness in schizophrenics as compared to control subjects was also studied with controversial results (4, 2). No studies have been reported in which the antibody response of schizophrenic patients was measured quantitatively simultaneously with the development of an allergic skin reaction following sensitization.

The decarboxylation of 3, 4-dihydroxyphenyl-alanine (Dopa) to dopamine has been shown previously in animal and human tissues in both in vitro and in vivo studies (Sourkes, 1966; Vogel et al., 1970). However, very little information is available as to whether or not the decarboxylation of Dopa occurs in human red blood cells (RBC). In the present experiment we demonstrated this change in RBC from normals and from schizophrenics. An ionization chamber method was used for an instantaneous and continuous measurement of 14CO2 production from DL-dopa-carboxyl-14C by RBC in vitro.

In therapy the psychiatrist is concerned to understand how the patient views himself and the significant people in his environment. It is of some importance to develop objective measures of the accuracy of the psychiatrist's understanding of the patient's world. The Repertory Grid offers a suitable technique.

The experience and meaning of grief differs with the progression of self-awareness of the experiencer in his ontogenetic evolution from utter dependence to differentiated integration. Autonomy, achieved by very few adults, carries with it the connotation of transcendence over mere obedience and conformity to the canons of society. This is different from deviance in two important respects. Deviance is a movement in a horizontal direction away from cultural dominance, and therefore could manifest itself in antisocial activities. Autonomy, being a movement in a vertical direction, is supra-cultural and non-conformist rather than antisocial. All this has a great deal to do with existential grief, the experience of which can change according to the level of ontology of the experiencer. The following operational definitions are needed to treat the subject of ontological grief in a meaningful manner.

The environment of most out-patients involves driving and also drinking. ‘Tranquillisers’ alone or in conjunction with alcohol may contribute to the road toll (Milner, 1969). Animal laboratory and human studies indicate that a variety of drugs may potentiate the effects of alcohol (Forney and Hughes, 1968; Milner, 1970).

The term regression as used in psychiatry may be defined as the re-living by an individual of his past, or part of it, in the present. Thus, in psychoanalytic therapy the patient may treat the analyst as he did one of his parents in his childhood, while in the dream of the normal person primitive tendencies and mechanisms of thought are revived. It should be noted, however, that regression is rarely or ever clear-cut or total. Although the patient reacts towards the psychoanalyst as he did in his childhood towards his father, yet at the same time he remains well aware of the analyst's true identity. Again, in the dream, although the underlying thoughts and feelings are related to childhood they are disguised and distorted by being mixed up with experiences of much later origin. In both the transference situation and the dream there is a ‘telescoping’ of the past into the present, a fusing of chronological levels, and a ‘condensation’ of experience.

Lang (1960) has reported that in his own data and in that of Jensch (1941) the sex ratios of the maternal half-sibs of homosexual index cases was low and the sex ratio of paternal half-sibs was high (see Table). I should like to offer a possible explanation of this phenomenon.

The available evidence suggests that adolescent drug addicts are likely to have an underlying personality disorder, to come from broken homes, and to have parents who are alcoholic, antisocial or mentally ill (Nylander, 1964; Chein, 1965; Rosenberg, 1969a and b). Assuming that a background of family instability is related to deviant behaviour—including the abuse of drugs—it seems probable that some of the siblings of young addicts, who grew up in similar circumstances, would also become the subjects of psychiatric disorder.

In Great Britain the majority of terminations are carried out under Clause 2 of the new Abortion Act—a threat to the physical or mental health of the mother. It is understood that the majority of such abortions are performed on mental rather than physical grounds. Little is known about the degree of psychiatric illness displayed by these subjects, and practically no studies so far published have attempted to quantify this.

Weintraub and Aronson have described a method for the study of Psychological Defence Mechanisms through verbal behaviour analysis in psychiatric patients and controls (Weintraub and Aronson, 1962, 1964, 1965 and 1967). In this study we have re-tested their method on a group of middle-aged English depressed patients and matched surgical controls.

In many psychiatric units nurses now wear ordinary clothes instead of uniforms. The rationale underlying such changes has usually been that uniforms inappropriately emphasize the medical role of the nurse in physical treatment and interfere with her therapeutic role. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of such a change on the attitudes of both nurses and patients.