The 1969 disturbances in Belfast were on a scale unprecedented since 1886. By the end of September, there had been 328 injuries requiring hospital treatment, 8 fatalities, and 113 arrests (1). At least 500 houses had been damaged beyond repair and 4,000 people rendered homeless. Some 200 streets were heavily barricaded and guarded, while much of the city was effectively under military occupation.

The period of the study was from August 15th to the end of September, 1969. Severe rioting occurred in Belfast on the nights of 14th and 15th August, and during the next few weeks rioting, arson, looting and intimidation continued. Eight fatal casualties were recorded and a large number of people were injured, mainly from gunshot wounds.

In recent years there has been a considerable interest in the classification of depressed patients, and in the use of multivariate statistical techniques as tools for classifying, with the hope of either validating traditional classifications or suggesting useful new ones. One technique employed for this purpose has been factor analysis. A number of studies have used this method to explore the overlapping endogenous-reactive or psychotic-neurotic dichotomies. Most have demonstrated a factor or factors reflecting such a dimension which appears to form a consistent, systematic source of variance in ratings of depressed patients (1, 5, 11, 15, 16, 18, 26, 31, 33).

In recent years there has been a steady and alarming increase in the prevalence of attempted suicide (Aitken, Buglass and Kreitman, 1969). Though all cases of attempted suicide may be regarded as a distress signal, only a proportion of such cases are seriously mentally ill. The problem of their assessment and organization of appropriate treatment is becoming an increasing burden on the psychiatric services. The Hill Report (1968) recommended that all cases should be admitted to special poisoning treatment centres which have continuous psychiatric cover. In towns where there are medical schools this may be a feasible proposition, and such a centre has been in operation in Edinburgh for a number of years (Matthew, Proudfoot, Brown and Aitken, 1969). In the Aberdeen region all cases are treated in the city casualty department and are assessed by the staff of the Professorial Psychiatric Unit, which is less than a mile away. Seven day cover is provided by a duty rota, each doctor being on call for a period of twenty-four hours. In a non-university town with less staff available such an efficient service may not be possible, and Crammer (1969) has suggested that a questionary administered by the house officer in the casualty department might serve as a satisfactory screening procedure.

In Personal Construct Theory (Kelly, 1955), a person is considered to describe and predict his perception of the world by using bi-polar constructs which form an integrated system. In clinical practice it is possible to elicit from a patient not only a description of his environment in his own constructs but also an account of how he uses his construct system to predict future events. The following study shows how an assessment of the patient's construct system is useful in evaluating the outcome by therapy.

It is still generally believed that it is dangerous to combine the tricyclic antidepressants with any of the M.A.O. inhibitors, and the Federal Drug Administration, the Witts Committee and the drug manufacturers caution against so doing. Several current texts reiterate these warnings. (Beck, 1967; Malitz, 1966: Shepherd et al., 1968).

When the Plymouth Nuffield Clinic was planned it was decided to evaluate its functioning in respect of the adult psychiatric services in Plymouth. This paper reports the findings. The Nuffield Clinic project was a joint venture between the hospital service and the local authority, so that they might collaboratively discharge their respective tasks in both the spirit and the letter of the 1959 Mental Health Act. Pilkington (1966) has described the ideas and the stages leading to the creation of the clinic.

Surveys of homeless men have emphasized a variety of correlations and causes. Criminality (Edwards et al., 1968; Sewell, 1969; Laidlaw, 1956; Commissioners of Police, 1859), alcoholism (Straus, 1946; Wattenburg et al., 1954; Bogue, 1963; Blumberg., et al., 1966) and poverty (Booth, 1890; National Assistance Board, 1966; London County Council, 1962; Shelter, 1969) are some to which attention has been drawn already (Lodge Patch, 1970). The relationship of these to a rootless way of life seems less impressive than psychiatric factors (Anderson, 1923; Whiteley, 1955; Laidlaw, 1956: Skinner, 1966–7). Edwards, for example, showed that 24 per cent of men in a reception centre had been in mental hospitals; 7 per cent having been discharged within six months of the Survey.

The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly as a contribution to the literature of female delinquency, a subject that has attracted little contemporary attention, with one notable exception, the essentially psychiatric study of a year's intake into a classifying Approved School by Cowie, Cowie and Slater (1968). Secondly as an examination of the hypothesis that early adverse experiences are related to female delinquency in particular and to behaviour disturbance in general.

Numerous studies have related psychiatric disturbance to season of birth. Barry and Barry (1961) cited nine independent studies which concluded that mentally ill persons, especially schizophrenics, tend to have been born during the first four months of the calendar year. Hare and Price (1969) reported more recent evidence of similar seasonal birth trends for large groups of hospitalized British schizophrenics and manic-depressives, as compared with neurotics. Barry and Barry (1964) later suggested that the seasonal birth pattern may be more relevant to middle and lower class schizophrenics than to upper class schizophrenics from private mental hospitals. Orme (1963) upheld this seasonality of birth pattern among less intelligent but not among more intelligent psychotics. Norris and Chowning (1962), who confirmed the seasonal birth pattern among Canadian schizophrenics from both public and private hospitals, observed that the significance of seasonal differences between schizophrenics and normal populations depends upon which population birth years are selected for comparison. Norris and Chowning therefore suggest that the seasonal birth trend among schizophrenics may be the result of random variations in birth rate together with post-hoc grouping of the particular years for comparison. While this interpretation and criticism is tenable for a given study, it has become less tenable as evidence converges from the many independent studies.

The belief that the phenomena of ‘crime’ and of ‘epilepsy’ are associated has a long history and probably was put in its most forceful form by Lombroso (1889; see Ferrero, 1911). Nobody now believes, as did Lombroso, that most criminals are epileptics, but the controversies surrounding the extent and form of any relationship have by no means yet been finally resolved.

The use of drugs (as intoxicants) is universal; the hedonistic use of such drugs has led to their abuse, and has always been a social problem. Although the indulgence in some drugs is confined to certain cultures, others like alcohol have been commonly used all over the world. Alcohol, opium, hemp (cannabis and its several preparations) have been widely used for their exhilarating qualities.

Psychiatrists have been interested in the terminal stages of schizophrenia for many years. The attempt to distinguish different lines of evolution for this mysterious illness has unfortunately not been very successful. One can only agree with Henri Ey, who said, ‘… the final stages (of schizophrenia) are not the clinical expression of well-defined types, of real entities. They are organized forms in the schizophrenic catastrophe, forms of liquidation of the bankrupt psyche, which depend less on a specific process than on its psychodynamic vicissitudes.’

Abnormalities of sex chromosomes are associated with various forms of neuropsychiatric disorder, and Polani (1969) has reviewed the literature. While there were numerous reports associating the XXY and XXX constitutions with psychiatric disorder, the position was somewhat different with regard to Turner's syndrome. The purpose of this paper is to describe a patient who was shown to have the clinical pattern of Turner's Syndrome and an XO/XX/XXX mosaic chromosome pattern, and who presented with a schizophrenic illness.

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).