Data from an ongoing family interview study suggest that schizoaffective probands - including even those with a very brief history of a major depressive or manic syndrome - display a high prevalence of major mood disorders in their first-degree relatives. In this respect, schizoaffective probands proved significantly different from ‘pure’ schizophrenic probands, but not significantly different from bipolar probands.

The concordance and degree of overlap between 13 diagnostic systems for schizophrenia, including the five European systems of Berner, Bleuler, Langfeldt, Pull and Schneider, were evaluated in a cross-sectional study (N = 51) taking the phase of illness (acute or residual) into account. The diagnostic assessments were processed by computer using a 183-item standardised checklist and a data-processing program in GW-Basic language. The inter-rater reliability, as assessed by Kappa coefficient, was good to excellent for each diagnostic system established by this method (K from 0.5 to 1). When comparing the concordance between pairs of 13 diagnostic systems for schizophrenia in acute and residual phase groups, results showed that only two significant relationships were not influenced by the phase of illness (Carpenter x RDC; Catego x Schneider), while 24 were. These included only two relationships in the acute group (Carpenter Catego; Carpenter Schneider) and 22 links between pairs of systems in the residual group. In the acute group, no diagnosis of schizophrenia, including duration criteria such as those of DSM III-R, Feighner, Langfeldt, Pull and RDC, was linked to other systems. In the residual group, the operational systems such as Catego, DSM III-R, Feighner, Newhaven, Pull and RDC had more than five relationships with the other systems whereas the non-operational systems of Bleuler, ICD9, Langfeldt and Schneider had less than four relationships with the others. Except Pull's criteria, the European diagnostic systems, in particular Berner's and Bleuler's, seemed to differ from the others because of the few relationships displayed. The results underline the importance of taking the phase of illness into account when comparing between studies utilizing different diagnostic systems for schizophrenia. They also show the relationships between European and international diagnostic systems, insufficiently established so far.

Experimental evidence suggesting that psychiatric comorbidity has important clinical and prognostic implications in bulimia nervosa has mostly been based on outpatient studies investigating a selection of co-existing psychopathological features with rather unstructured and not standardized diagnostic instruments. Using structured instruments (SCID-P, MDCL) for the diagnoses of DSM III-R axis I disorders and clinical interviews for the diagnosis of DSM III-R axis II disorders in 24 hospitalized bulimics, the present study demonstrated that more than half of the patients had two or three axis I disorders in addition to bulimia nervosa and almost half of the patients met criteria of at least one personality disorder. Subgroups of patients classified according to the type of psychiatric comorbidity did not differ significantly with respect to clinical features; regarding measures of hospital behavior therapy outcome. However, the findings provided evidence for a negative impact of anxiety disorder in addition to bulimia nervosa on the improvement of bulimic behavior and possibly also on self-rated depression.

The contribution of EEG to theory as well as to psychiatric practice of depression is negligible. The prevailing view is that no ‘abnormal’ characteristic can be demonstrated in affective disorders. Since ‘abnormal’ is generally taken in a neurological sense, all those EEG characteristics are faded out which cannot be regarded as neurologically abnormal but which nevertheless may be useful for psychiatric concerns. Thus, early observations concerning the spatio-temporal aspect of the EEG have essentially gone unnoticed, thereby evading systematic scrutiny. It has been maintained that periodically melancholic patients more often exhibited a dynamically rigid EEG than patients with neurotic forms. Our retrospective study involved 314 inpatients with depressive disorders who were subdivided into an ‘endogenous’ and a ‘non-endogenous’ subgroup using both IC'D 9 diagnoses as well as RDC criteria. The EEGs were designated to one of the three categories, rigid, labile, or physiomorphic. Forty-two percent of the patients in the ‘endogenous’ subgroup exhibited a dynamically rigid EEG (DR) compared to 20% of those from the ‘non-endogenous’ subgroup. Symptoms of psychomotor retardation positively correlated with DR, whereas ‘anxiety’ positively correlated with non-DR (labile or physiomorphic EEG dynamics). In addition, there was a positive correlation between DR and both the number of manifestations of depressive disorders and the number of previous hospitalizations. We interpret DR as a personality-bound characteristic which, far from being pathognomonic of a certain syndrome or even diagnosis, instead indicates a higher degree of vulnerability towards manifestation of melancholic syndromes with psychomotor retardation. This does not exclude the possibility of a state-dependent intensification of DR.

Repeated administrations of tianeptine (10 mg·kg-1 im, twice daily, for 15 days) did not globally influence sleep-wakefulness cycles and cortical EEG activity overnight in rhesus monkeys. This antidepressant agent neither inhibited paradoxical sleep nor increased slow wave sleep. However, tianeptine induced a slight, but significant increase in wakefulness during the first hour following its administration, and had no sedative effects. The influence of tianeptine on sleep patterns in the monkey could be related to other arousal or sleep modifications observed in rats and cats, and to certain electrophysiological data reported in rat studies.

A case is presented in which asthma and panic disorder co-existed, and in which the mislabeling of the latter as the former proved dangerous.