II. Psychological Aspects
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2018
The following paper describes the psychological part of a psychiatric and EEG study of psychiatric illness occurring for the first time in women of the involutional age range. The origins of the investigation and the clinical results are fully discussed elsewhere (Tait et al., 1957). They include such matters as the psychiatric observation that classical forms of melancholia seem to have become relatively infrequent. One possible explanation for this may be thought to be in the earlier recognition, hospitalization and treatment of psychiatric illness. It was decided that an appropriate study would pay attention only to women who are admitted to a mental hospital for the first time. In practice this has included all such women admitted to amenity beds in the hospital over a given period of time. This modified selection of admissions was made in order to ensure as wide a range of illness as possible, giving a higher proportion of neurotic illness without excluding psychotic material. The age range studied was that usually considered to encompass the normal range of the biological involution, 40–55. Such a study thus avoids the bias (apart from age) of any preconceived mode of selection. By including only first admissions, some assurance was given that up till then, the patients had been reasonably free from psychiatric illness.
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