Max Hamilton

Assessment of the severity of primary depressive illness: Wakefield self-assessment depression inventory

A self-assessment inventory for measuring severity of depressive illness is described, Its chief merits are brevity and simplicity. The correlation with the Hamilton Rating Scale is +0·87. At a cut-off level of 14–15 points 3% of patients and 7·5% of ‘Normals’ are misclassified. The mean scores for male and female patients do not differ significantly and the small positive correlation of score with age is of little practical significance. The limitations in this inventory are discussed but, despite them, it has practical value and merits further development.

Examinations for foreign psychiatrists: problems of language

The National Health Hospital Service has a large number of doctors from overseas in the junior medical grades. Some specialities have a higher proportion of these doctors than others. At the last count, on 30 September 1972 (Health Trend, 1973), 467 out of 8 11 (57.6%) registrars and senior house officers in adult psychiatry consisted of medical graduates who were born outside the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland. The majority of these are likely to be foreign graduates whose mother tongue is not English. Since psychiatry is the most languagebound branch of medicine, the foreign graduates undergoing psychiatric training in this country are likely to have special difficulties. This applies to learning the subject, passing the examinations as well as practising psychiatry. For some years, we have been running a D.P.M. course at the University Department of Psychiatry, Leeds. The course is in two parts, part I and 11, each running for three academic terms, at the end of which there is an examination. Junior doctors working in psychiatric units and psychiatric hospitals in and around Leeds attend on day release basis for one and a half days a week. Graduates whose mother tongue is not English are accepted for the D.P.M. course only after they have passed the English test of Leeds University for foreign graduates. This means reaching the 60 percentile in comprehension, vocabulary, and reading of non-English speaking postgraduates.

Ten years of chlorpromazine

Summary Chlorpromazine was the first of the “major tranquillizers.” These drugs have an extensive and varied use in general medicine but their main application is in psychiatry. In this field they are of great importance, but even more so is the impetus they have given to the development of research and theories.

Psychometric Scales for Dementia

The special requirements of scales for detecting and measuring dementia in its various aspects are described. Some available scales are evaluated accordingly.

Psychopathology of cognition

In psychiatry we still think of psychopathology in terms of the three broad Aristotelian faculties of Cognition, Affection and Conation (the last two sometimes combined into Orexis), which can be roughly interpreted as Thought, Feeling and Will. Despite the efforts of modern psychology, it is very difficult to get away from this old classification which comes back in subtle disguises, however much it is formally discarded. Disorders of cognition may be classified into those pertaining to Perception, Thought and Memory.

Planning of Team Research

SUMMARY The planning of team research has been dealt with here from two points of view: the organization of the work and the problem of human relationships. These are not two different problems but simply different aspects of the same problem. It is easy to organize work to get something done but it is just as important and more difficult to think of the difficulties and complications that may arise and to prevent them.

Characteristics of Therapy in Statistical Analysis

One of the most central features of the controlled trial is the allocation of treatments to subjects by chance, a procedure known as randomization. This serves two functions: in the first place it guarantees an unbiased allocation of the treatments (and there is no better method of doing so) and therefore permits a fair comparison between treatments. Secondly, it provides the basis for the application of the theory of probability which underlies statistical techniques. It is true that statistical tests are applied to data in which there has been no randomization, but the inferences in such cases are insecure.

TAKING A PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY

4) History of Presenting Complaint • When did you last feel well? • SOCRATES! The mnemonic for taking a history of a pain may be helpful for some symptoms: Site, Onset, Character, Radiation, Alleviating factors , Time course and periodicity, Exacerbating and precipitating factors, Severity • When/ how did problems start? Can you think of any potential triggers? Duration, course of the problem. • These questions then vary depending on the specific problem that the patient has presented with;