Pagophagia, or the excessive consumption of ice or iced drinks, is popularly regarded as a novel manifestation of pica, which has emerged, predominantly in the USA, over the last 30 years. However, a sampling of historical sources reveals that not only are there warnings in the writings of both Hippocrates and Aristotle concerning the dangers of excessive intake of cold or iced water, but a series of medical works, from the sixteenth century on, incorporate discussion and illustrative case histories about the detrimental effect of immoderate usage of cold water, ice and snow, frequently in the context of disordered eating.

Smooth pursuit eye movements to a sinusoidally moving target were recorded using the electro-oculogram in 49 subjects with bipolar disorder, 19 with major depressive disorder and 61 with definite schizophrenia, and compared with 145 normal controls. The signals were analysed in the frequency domain to yield a signal to noise ratio that is known to relate to accuracy of smooth pursuit. Smooth pursuit was found to be significantly poorer in schizophrenics than in bipolars, major depressed or controls. Eye-tracking performance was independent of the effects of neuroleptics, tricyclic antidepressants or lithium, and was not altered by the severity of depression in the affective psychoses. There was a small, but significant worsening of smooth pursuit with age in controls and schizophrenics, but this did not account for the group differences. The results support the view that among the major psychoses eye-tracking dysfunction is specific to schizophrenia.

Although calcification of the basal ganglia is a relatively common and asymptomatic finding on cranial computed tomography, familial idiopathic calcification of the basal ganglia (ICBG) is a rare disorder with neurological and behavioural manifestations. Attention has recently been drawn to the frequency with which cases are diagnosed as schizophrenic (Cummings et al. 1983; Lowenthal, 1986; Davison, 1987). We report a family in which a mother and son have ICBG, but while the son has a paranoid schizophrenia and intellectual deterioration, the mother shows no psychiatric illness. A review of the relevant literature suggests that psychosis is not as common as usually supposed, and may only be coincidentally associated with familial ICBG. Moreover, we find little convincing evidence that familial ICBG is an independent entity; instead, and in agreement with earlier authorities (Bruyn et al. 1964), we argue that published accounts and our own cases provide evidence that the condition is related to pseudo-hypoparathyroidism (PHP) and, therefore, may be due to a defect in a guanine nucleotide binding protein.

The question of the relationship between anxiety and depression remains to be solved. The fact that clinical pictures show substantial overlap makes it difficult, using conventional instruments, to distinguish between the co-occurrence of anxiety and depression and overlap in definitions and measurement of the two syndromes. This calls for the construction of scales which exclude symptoms common to both syndromes and incorporate symptoms specific only to anxiety or only to depression; i.e. scales with maximum discriminant validity. This article describes the construction of two such scales based on PSE symptoms; a prototypical anxiety scale and a prototypical depression scale. In a sample of 134 non-psychotic psychiatric out-patients these scales show good reliability and validity, both as a measure of severity and as a screening device. Compared to the Hamilton anxiety and depression scales (HARS and HRSD), the correlation between the prototypical anxiety and depression scales is low.

Using positron emission tomography (PET) and 15Oxygen, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured in 33 patients with primary depression, 10 of whom had an associated severe cognitive impairment, and 23 age-matched controls. PET scans from these groups were analysed on a pixel-by-pixel basis and significant differences between the groups were identified on Statistical Parametric Maps (SPMs). In the depressed group as a whole rCBF was decreased in the left anterior cingulate and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (P < 0·05 Bonferroni-corrected for multiple comparisons). Comparing patients with and without depression-related cognitive impairment, in the impaired group there were significant decreases in rCBF in the left medial frontal gyrus and increased rCBF in the cerebellar vermis (P < 0·05 Bonferroni-corrected). Therefore an anatomical dissociation has been described between the rCBF profiles associated with depressed mood and depression-related cognitive impairment. The pre-frontal and limbic areas identified in this study constitute a distributed anatomical network that may be functionally abnormal in major depressive disorder.

A genetic analysis of the co-occurrence of bulimia and major depression (MD) was performed on 1033 female twin pairs obtained from a population based register. Personal interviews were conducted and clinical diagnoses made according to DSM-III-R criteria.

Additive genes, but not family environment, are found to play an important aetiological role in both bulimia and MD. The genetic liabilities of the two disorders are correlated 0·456. While unique environmental factors account for around half of the variation in liability to both bulimia and MD, these risk factors appear to be unrelated, i.e., each disorder has its own set of unique environmental risk factors. Thus, the genetic liability of bulimia and MD is neither highly specific nor entirely nonspecific. There is some genetic correlation between the two disorders as well as some genetic and environmental risk factors unique to each disorder. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

The aim of the study was to compare the clinical features and predisposing characteristics of patients with an early onset of bulimia nervosa with those with a more typical onset. Twenty-three cases of early onset bulimia nervosa (onset age 15 or below) were compared with 23 sex- and class-matched cases of typical onset (onset age 17 to 21) using a retrospective case–control design. No difference was found in eating symptomatology between the two groups. Deliberate self-harm was more frequent in the early onset group, and there was a trend towards more depression among their relatives. Inadequate parental control occurred more often in the early onset group, but other indicators of intrafamilial disturbance did not differ in the two groups. There was also a trend for the early onset group to be exposed to more cultural stress as a result of family migration. Early onset patients were found to have a higher loading on risk factors than typical onset patients.

Psychiatrists used a semi-structured Standardized Psychiatric Examination method to examine 810 adults drawn from a probability sample of eastern Baltimore residents in 1981. Of the population, 5·9% was found to be significantly depressed. DSM-III major depression (MD) had a prevalence of 1·1% and ‘non-major depression’ (nMD), our collective term for the other depressive disorder categories in DSM-III, had a prevalence of 3·4%. The two types of depression differed by sex ratio, age-specific prevalence, symptom severity, symptom profiles, and family history of suicide. Analyses using a multiple logistic regression model discerned that both types of depression were influenced by adverse life events, and that nMD was influenced strongly by gender, marital status, and lack of employment outside the home. Neither type of depression was influenced by income, education, or race. This study validates the concept of major depression as a clinical entity. Future studies of the aetiology, mechanism, and treatment of depression should distinguish between these two types of depression.

Several studies have suggested that ‘anomalous parenting’, as measured by the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), may be a differential risk factor to subsequent depression in adulthood – being irrelevant to melancholia but over-represented in non-melancholic depressive disorders. Such a ‘specificity’ effect is confirmed in our current sample of 65 melancholic and 84 non-melancholic depressed patients. Secondly, we examine the risk to depression effected by exposure to one parent with an anomalous parental style, and the extent to which that risk is modified by characteristics of the other parent. We find clear evidence of additive effects with the risk to non-melancholic depression being raised by exposure to ‘anomalous parenting’ from two parents. Of the varying parental styles measured by the PBI, low parental care from both parents provided the highest risk to non-melancholic depression (being 4–7 time higher in one sample and 13–27 times higher in the other).

We used cluster analysis to delineate coping subtypes in a sample of 166 men with coronary heart disease who completed the Antwerp out-patient rehabilitation programme. These subtypes were identified on the basis of three well-defined superordinate traits that were selected from a comprehensive taxonomy: negative affectivity, social inhibition, and self-deception. Using Ward's minimum variance method and the cubic clustering criterion, we identified four coping subtypes; low-negative affectivity (N = 48), high-negative affectivity (N = 30), inhibited (N = 62), and repressive (N = 26) individuals. The accuracy of the resulting classification was demonstrated across parallel data sets and was further validated against external, health-related correlates that were not included in the clustering. The identified coping subtypes were significantly related to self-reports of subjective distress/perceived stress, ratings of Type A behaviour and anger-in, return to work, prevalence of chest-pain complaints, and use of minor tranquillizers and sleeping pills. The major findings of this study suggest that (a) male coronary patients represent a heterogeneous population with distinctly different coping subtypes, and that (b) a relatively small number of homogeneous subtypes can account for a substantial amount of variance in subjective well-being, coronary-prone behaviour, and return to work. These findings indicate that psychosomatic research should focus on how superordinate traits interact within individuals and corroborate the appropriateness of a class model to describe coping styles of male coronary patients. It is argued that discrepant findings across studies of Type-A behaviour and hostility may be related to the coping subtypes of the subject sample. Further attempts to cross-validate this classification scheme and to examine its health-related correlates are needed.

In a prospective study 22 bus crews who were victims of physical assault were assessed using standardized psychiatric instruments, followed up for 18 months and compared to a non-assaulted control group drawn from the same bus garage. At initial assessment the assaulted group, compared to the controls showed a significant increase in psychiatric impairment and distress (as measured by the GHQ-30 and IES respectively), with 23% of assault victims developing post-traumatic stress disorder as defined by DSM-III-R. At follow-up, while high levels of both psychiatric impairment and distress persisted there was evidence that they may be separate phenomena.

The startle response is a universal and phylogenetically ancient reflex. Pathological exaggerations and modifications of startle underlie the symptomatology of a surprisingly diverse range of neuropsychiatric disorders, a fact that seems to have gone largely unappreciated. We review the available literature on the physiology of the normal human startle response and examine the neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by pathological startle. Startle epilepsy and primary hyperekplexia are considered as neurological disorders involving abnormal startle. Patients with hyperstartle and exotic culture-bound syndromes characterized by excessive startle are considered by the authors to represent extreme variants of the normal startle response. Post-traumatic stress disorder, drug and alcohol withdrawal states and schizophrenia all have abnormal startle as a clinical feature secondary to increased arousal and presumed disturbance of central neurotransmitter systems. The neurophysiological mechanisms by which abnormalities of the startle response may occur are discussed and a system of classification of neuropsychiatric hyperstartles is suggested.

Patterns of psychiatric diagnoses given during adolescence to a group of individuals continuously registered with a single general practitioner in South London over 20 years were analysed first during ‘early adolescence’ and secondly during ‘early adulthood’. Psychiatric diagnoses were found to be relatively common. Of the young adolescents who received a psychiatric diagnosis (almost one in ten of the group), 38% received a psychiatric diagnosis as young adults compared with only 16% of the remainder. Comorbidity was found to be very common – over 50% of young adults with a diagnosis of depression also had a diagnosis of anxiety and phobic neuroses. Young people with problems of a psychological nature therefore deserve more attention, particularly from the primary care team.

GPs and psychiatrists from South Wales were asked to make decisions based on the information included in each of 16 vignettes describing depressed and anxious subjects. This information contained randomly assigned sex, psychiatric label, good and bad psychosocial context and age as well as eight different severity ratings of depression and anxiety symptoms. Our results showed that both GPs and psychiatrists were influenced in their decision making by the severity of the illness, but that GPs alone were also strongly influenced by the presence of male sex and by the presence of a psychiatric label. Good or bad psychosocial context had no influence on the GPs' referral decision, and previous experience in psychiatry or other vocational training had no detectable effect, but this may be because of the sample size.

The applicability of the Charing Cross health indicator (CH-X) to the field of mental health was investigated in a community setting using descriptive statistics and principal components analysis. The CH-X is based on assessments of (i) distress and (ii) disability. Our results suggest that with respect to quality of life in mental health settings measurements of distress may be of greater importance than disability. In addition, the CH-X may be insensitive to variations in the severity of mental disorder and may primarily reflect physical disability as opposed to social disability. QALYs methodology may require the adoption of a multidimensional measure of health in order to fulfil its proposed role in comparing medical and mental health programmes.

The prevalence of psychiatric disorders was investigated in all inhabitants over 85 years of age (N = 1259), residing in Leiden, The Netherlands. The study design consisted of two phases. In the first phase the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) were used to screen for potential cases; in the second phase all potential cases and a sample of the non-cases were interviewed with the Geriatric Mental State Schedule (GMS). DSM-III diagnoses were made based on the GMS and on information obtained from caregivers. There was a high prevalence of organic disorders of 31% (95% CI: 27–35%). The estimated overall prevalence rate for functional disorders was 8% (95% CI: 4–12%). This is an underestimate because organic and functional disorders are mutually exclusive in DSM-III. The prevalence rate estimated for the population at risk for functional disorders (i.e. the total population minus the organic cases) was 12% (95% CI: 6–18%). This is very similar to prevalence rates for functional disorders found in population based surveys in younger age groups. Therefore, in contrast with the dementias, there appears to be no increase with age for the functional disorders.

Major psychiatric disorder is more common in people of lower rather than higher socioeconomic status. This is less clear for the commoner, so-called minor psychiatric disorders, but these are more affected by tendency to report symptoms. To examine this the distribution of minor psychiatric disorder by employment grade measured by the 30-item General Health Questionnaire is reported from the first cross-sectional phase of the Whitehall II Study of 10314 London-based civil servants, men and women between 35 and 55 years. Validation of the GHQ in a random subsample stratified by grade and sex (N = 201) suggested that people in lower employment grades tend to under-report minor psychiatric disorder on the GHQ relative to those in higher employment grades. The prevalence of minor psychiatric disorder corrected by the coefficients from the validity study was greater in the lower employment grades than the higher employment grades particularly for men. This was echoed in grade differences in well-being measured by the Affect Balance Scale, and in symptoms and recurrent health problems. Overall, for women there were few clear-cut differences in minor psychiatric disorder by employment grade. The lack of social class gradient in women suggests that further exploration should examine women's role at work and their personal lives for the aetiology of minor psychiatric disorder.