The impact of the Danish Medico-Legal Council on the choice between treatment and punishment for non-psychotic offenders.

Background: The Danish Medico-Legal Council provides the court with statements based on available psychiatric assessment reports to assist the law in the use of the Penal Code sections on mentally disordered offenders.

Aims: To analyse the impact of the Council on the courts' choice between punishment and treatment in cases of offenders falling under §69 of the Penal Code, i.e.

Mentally disordered non-psychotic criminal offenders--treatment instead of punishment.

Background: By including §69 into the Danish Penal Code, it has since 1975 been possible to use psychiatric measures as legal sanctions for even non-psychotic offenders-if the measure is believed to be preventive of future crime. To be able to decide on the applicability of treatment measures as sanctions in criminal cases, the court will request a psychiatric report. They may furthermore ask a medical expert consultation board, the Danish Medico-Legal Council, for an opinion on the mental status of the defendant.

Binary classification of ¹⁸F-flutemetamol PET using machine learning: comparison with visual reads and structural MRI.

(18)F-flutemetamol is a positron emission tomography (PET) tracer for in vivo amyloid imaging. The ability to classify amyloid scans in a binary manner as 'normal' versus 'Alzheimer-like', is of high clinical relevance. We evaluated whether a supervised machine learning technique, support vector machines (SVM), can replicate the assignments made by visual readers blind to the clinical diagnosis, which image components have highest diagnostic value according to SVM and how (18)F-flutemetamol-based classification using SVM relates to structural MRI-based classification using SVM within the same subjects.

The Danish version of the Baylor Profound Mental State Examination.

Background: An instrument of assessing the cognitive status of the severely demented is needed.

Aim: To validate the Danish version of the cognitive part of the Baylor Profound Mental State Examination (BPMSE-cog).

Design: Participants were residents in dementia care units.

Development of a dementia assessment quality database.

Objective: Increased focus on the quality of health care requires tools and information to address and improve quality. One tool to evaluate and report the quality of clinical health services is quality indicators based on a clinical database.

Method: The Capital Region of Denmark runs a quality database for dementia evaluation in the secondary health system.

Acute and transient psychosis in old age and the subsequent risk of dementia: a nationwide register-based study.

Aim: Using the unique Danish psychiatric and somatic health registers, we investigated the rate of subsequent dementia in patients with late-onset acute and transient psychosis.

Methods: By linkage of the psychiatric and the somatic nationwide registers of all patients with in- or outpatient hospital contact in Denmark, we included all patients with a first ever contact during the period 1 January 1994 to 31 December 2001 with one of the main index diagnoses: late-onset acute and transient psychosis or osteoarthritis. Data on the general population were also included.

The Neuropsychiatric Inventory--NPI. Validation of the Danish version.

Assessment of neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia has great clinical importance. The aim of the study was validation of the Danish version of the NPI, using assessments of 72 demented and 29 non-demented of age 65+ years and their caregivers at three visits. The NPI was administered by the same psychiatric nurse interviewing the same caregiver.

Delusional disorder in old age and the risk of developing dementia: a nationwide register-based study.

Objective: To examine whether very late first-contact delusional disorder carries a risk for later development of dementia.

Methods: By linkage of the psychiatric and the somatic nationwide registers of all out- and in-patients with hospital contact in Denmark, we included all 60+ patients with first ever from 1 January 1994 to 31 December 2001 with the index main diagnosis: delusional disorder. First contact osteoarthritis patients as well as the general population were used as controls.

Late and very-late first-contact schizophrenia and the risk of dementia--a nationwide register based study.

Objective: To examine whether late and very-late first-contact schizophrenia carry a risk for later development of dementia.

Methods: By linkage of the psychiatric and the somatic nation-wide registers of all out- and in-patients with hospital contact in Denmark, we identified all patients with first ever contact during the period from January 1994 to December 2001 with one of the index main diagnoses: late (age >or=40) and very-late first-contact (age >or=60) schizophrenia. First contact osteoarthritis patients as well as data on the general population were used as controls.

Rating scales for depression in the elderly: external and internal validity.

Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the external and internal validity of the 6- and 17-item versions of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D(6) and HAM-D(17)), the Bech-Rafaelsen Melancholia Scale, the 15- and 30-item versions of the Geriatric Depression Scale, and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia in a population of depressed demented and nondemented Danish elderly.

Method: Two clinicians performed independent, blinded assessments of the study population, which was drawn from psychogeriatric outpatient clinics, and a control group of elderly subjects. Concurrent and convergent validity were assessed using correlation coefficient analyses, and to evaluate the internal validity, item response analysis using the Mokken coefficient and Rasch analysis was performed.

The Geriatric Depression Scale and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia. A validity study.

The study is a validation study of two psychogeriatric depression rating scales, The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD). The sensitivity and specificity, and the convergent and criterion validity of the two scales as well as the inter-rater reliability of the CSDD are reported. Two independent clinicians using the ICD-10 for depression and dementia, the Clinical Global Impression (CGI), the Hamilton Depression rating scale 17-items and the Mini-Mental-State Examination (MMSE), interviewed each patient or control subject.