Two groups of variables, endocrine and clinical, have been reported to have predictive value in determining response to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in depressed patients. Baseline levels of oxytocin associated neurophysin (OAN) and peak OAN response to ECT may predict clinical outcome, while the presence of delusional symptoms may indicate favourable initial response to ECT. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between these variables on initial and longer term response over a course of ECT, using a direct measure of plasma oxytocin concentrations. A substantial and immediate increase in oxytocin was seen after the first ECT, with significantly attenuated responses after the third and fifth ECTs. Increased plasma vasopressin concentrations were seen after all ECT treatments, each response being of similar magnitude. No associations were found between either endocrine baseline levels or peak responses, and clinical outcome. Only clinical variables predicted outcome, as patients with psychotic symptoms had more rapid initial response to ECT, and patients who had relapsed 2 months after the end of ECT had significantly higher depression ratings at day 14 of treatment than treatment responders.

This study assesses cardiovascular and subjective effects of traffic noise and the mediator role that negative self-statements play. Eighty-four female students underwent a Physiological Reaction Test to two 15 min presentations of high intensity traffic noise (85–95 db) under two noise conditions, with and without negative self-statements. Half of the subjects were given specific instructions to increase the credibility of the self-statements. Dependent variables were heart rate (HR), blood volume pulse amplitude from both temporal arteries and subjective tension. Traffic noise provoked subjective tension and cardiovascular responses that did not habituate either within or between noise presentations. Negative self-statements had the greatest effect on HR. In fact, this response habituated to a second noise presented only when this condition was without negative self-statements. Instructions increased the effect of the self-statements only on the left temporal artery and also increased subjective tension. The implications of this physiological reactivity in psychosomatic problems and the importance of negative self-statements are discussed.

This study questions the widely held assumption that the phenomenon known as mass psychogenic illness (MPI) exists per se in nature as a psychiatric disorder. Most MPI studies are problematical, being descriptive, retrospective investigations of specific incidents which conform to a set of pre-existing symptom criteria that are used to determine the presence of collective psychosomatic illness. Diagnoses are based upon subjective, ambiguous categories that reflect stereotypes of female normality which assume the presence of a transcultural disease or disorder entity, underemphasizing or ignoring the significance of episodes as culturally conditioned roles of social action. Examples of this bias include the mislabelling of dancing manias, tarantism and demonopathy in Europe since the Middle Ages as culture-specific variants of MPI. While ‘victims’ are typified as mentally disturbed females possessing abnormal personality characteristics who are exhibiting cathartic reactions to stress, it is argued that episodes may involve normal, rational people who possess unfamiliar conduct codes, world-views and political agendas that differ significantly from those of Western-trained investigators who often judge these illness behaviours independent of their local context and meanings.

Cognitive dysfunction is an integral feature of depression, in some cases of sufficient severity to warrant a diagnosis of dementia. There has been little systematic investigation of whether cognitive dysfunction is an inevitable consequence of depression, or is specific to a subgroup of depressed patients. Related to this is the distribution of cognitive dysfunction, whether there is a continuum of impairment or a distinct demented subgroup. Finally, there is the question of which aspects of cognitive function are most sensitive to the intellectual decline seen in depression. A study is described which addresses these issues. The distribution of global cognition was found to be normally distributed in the sample of 29 patients assessed. Based on this distribution and the scores of a control sample, the patients were classified as unimpaired, borderline or impaired. Two sets of independent comparisons were carried out. First, the unimpaired depressed patients were compared to matched non-depressed controls. Significant deficits were found on a range of neuropsychological measures covering aspects of language function, memory, both recall and recognition, attention and behavioural regulation. These same patients were also compared with two groups of matched depressed patients, with varying degrees of global cognitive impairment. In general, the cognitive measures showed a gradient of dysfunction across the three patient groups. Significant differences between the depressed groups were shown on measures of immediate recall, attention and behavioural regulation. The possible significance of attentional factors for the observed memory dysfunction is discussed.

Twenty-five schizophrenic patients currently experiencing Schneiderian symptoms performed a series of tasks in which drawings had to be made in the absence of immediate visual feedback. In comparison to 10 normal controls and to 30 patients not experiencing Schneiderian symptoms, the target group had great difficulty in keeping track of their performance and remembering what actions they had made. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that Schneiderian symptoms (such as delusions of alien control) are associated with impairments in the central monitoring of action.

Post-traumatic stress disorder was first recognized as a diagnostic category embracing reactions in response to overwhelming environmental stress ‘outside the range of usual human experience’ in DSM-III (APA, 1980). Such abnormal stressors are by no means a product of the twentieth century but have featured, sporadically, in all societies from the earliest civilizations. Longitudinal investigations of traumatic stress have rarely gone further back than the nineteenth century, and have been concerned, almost exclusively, with adverse effects following railway accidents and military combat. The present study, utilizing a mid-eighteenth century medical source, presents an analysis of the impact of a natural disaster on members of a peasant family trapped in an avalanche in the Italian Alps in 1755.

The purpose of this overview is to appraise the studies on the efficacy and effectiveness of family interventions in decreasing relapse in schizophrenic patients. The studies were identified by means of a computerized MEDLINE search, and the scanning of review articles and the reference lists of the primary articles identified. More than 300 citations were reviewed, and the potentially relevant articles revealed six randomized controlled trials that were included in this meta-analysis. The criteria for selecting potential studies as well as for the meta-analysis were tested by means of an inter-rater reliability check that showed a good agreement between two independent raters (K = 0·83, and K = 0·82, respectively). There were independent assessments of the quality of the studies selected, and data extraction comprised a descriptive information of the study population, the types of interventions, and the relevant outcome measurements. The total number of patients included in the six trials was 350 (181 in the control group and 169 in the experimental group). Regarding the decrease of relapse in the experimental group, the pooled odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals were: 0·30 (0·06, 0·71) for six months; 0·22 (0·09, 0·37) for nine months; and 0·17 (0·10, 0·35) for the 2-year follow-up. Two to five patients needed to be treated to avert one episode of relapse in a nine-month follow-up. The changes in Expressed Emotion status between experimental and control group combining nine months and one year follow-ups were shown to be marginally significant (P < 0·06), in favour of the experimental group. Emotional over-involvement was also marginally significant (P < 0·07), and there was no statistical difference in the distribution of criticism and hostility. In addition, the experimental group showed a significant increase with drug compliance and a reduction in hospitalization over time. These findings are discussed in light of the potential ingredients in the efficacy of family interventions by focusing on the limitations of using relapse as primary outcome in the assessment of efficacy trials with schizophrenic patients.

Effectiveness and side-effects of high- versus low-dose neuroleptic treatment of chronic psychosis have been assessed through a meta-analysis of 22 published randomized control trials comparing different neuroleptic doses. No incremental clinical improvement was found at doses above 375 mg equivalent of chlorpromazine, while a significant increase in adverse reactions was observed.

The relationship between neuropsychological test performance and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was examined in 29 patients meeting Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) for major depression. Following a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment two subsets of tests, comprising tests that discriminated between patients and controls or between patients with varying degrees of global cognitive impairment, were selected. These subtests were entered into a principal components analysis (PCA) which generated a two-factor solution, accounting for 50% of the overall variance in test scores. Individual patient loadings on each of these factors were subsequently correlated with regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), as measured by positron emission tomography (PET). Both factors demonstrated significant correlations with rCBF in the medial prefrontal cortex and frontal polar cortex while for each factor there were also unique patterns of correlations with posterior brain regions. The findings provide additional evidence that neuropsychological deficits in depression are associated with abnormalities in regional brain function and in particular with the function of the medial prefrontal cortex.

The stress-buffering effect of perceived support is explored in a large panel survey of adult female twins. The analysis begins by documenting a significant interaction between perceived support and acute stress in predicting DSM-III-R major depression. Various hypotheses are investigated to explain this interaction. These include the possibilities that the interaction is due to a stress-buffering effect of perceived support which is mediated by received support, that perceived support promotes either the increased use or the increased effectiveness of certain coping strategies, or that there is some underlying genetic factor that affects both the perception of support and adjustment to stress. No evidence was found for any of these hypotheses. The paper closes with a discussion of directions for future research aimed at explaining the interaction between perceived support and acute stress.

In this paper we describe a cognitive mechanism, the Intention Editor, which is triggered whenever there are several intentions competing in parallel with each other. This mechanism is hypothesized to be a subcomponent of a larger mechanism, the Supervisory Attentional System (SAS: Shallice, 1988) which serves inhibition in general. The Intention Editor interrupts one of several simultaneously activated intentions, preventing it from executing its action, utterance, or thought. This mechanism appears to develop during the first five to six years of life. We propose that an impairment in the development of this mechanism may account for the triad of symptoms in children with Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome (GTS): involuntary movements, involuntary utterances, and obsessive thoughts. This mechanism is tested with normal children aged 3–6 years old, and with children with GTS, in two experiments.

In Experiment 1, subjects were required to make one hand movement while inhibiting making a (different) hand movement that the other hand was simultaneously making. In Experiment 2, they were asked to say one thing while inhibiting saying something else. On both tasks, normal 6-year-olds were significantly better than normal 4-year-olds, but children with GTS performed worse than normal 6-year-olds, despite having a mean age of 12 years. These results constitute preliminary evidence for the theory that the Intention Editor is dysfunctional in GTS.

The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID and SCID II) was administered to 105 eating disorder in-patients in order to examine rates of comorbid psychiatric disorders and the chronological sequence in which these disorders developed. Eighty-six patients, 81·9% of the sample, had Axis I diagnoses in addition to their eating disorder. Depression, anxiety and substance dependence were the most common comorbid diagnoses. Anorexic restrictors were significantly more likely than bulimics (all subtypes) to develop their eating disorder before other Axis I comorbid conditions.

Personality disorders were common among the subjects; 69% met criteria for at least one personality disorder diagnosis. Of the 72 patients with personality disorders, 93% also had Axis I comorbidity. Patients with at least one personality disorder were significantly more likely to have an affective disorder or substance dependence than those with no personality disorder.

The validity of the twin method depends on the equal environment assumption (EEA) – that monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins are equally correlated in their exposure to environmental factors of aetiological importance for the trait under study. Parents may treat MZ twins more similarly than DZ twins thereby potentially violating the EEA. We tested this hypothesis for four common psychiatric disorders (major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, phobia, and alcoholism) in a population-based sample of female–female twin pairs where analyses indicate sufficient statistical power meaningfully to test the EEA. Mother's and father's beliefs about their twins' zygosity disagreed with assigned zygosity in approximately 20% of cases, often because of what they were told about their twins' zygosity at their birth. By structural equation model-fitting, we found no evidence that mother's or father's perceived zygosity influenced twin resemblance for any of the disorders. Compared to parents of DZ twins, parents of MZ twins were more likely to report that, in rearing their twins, they emphasized their similarities more than their differences. However, by model-fitting, mothers' and fathers' approach to raising twins had no significant influence on twin resemblance for the four examined psychiatric disorders. These results suggest that the differential treatment of MZ and DZ twins by their parents is unlikely to represent a significant bias in twin studies of these major psychiatric disorders.