Revisiting the concept of late catatonia.

Aim: The objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of late catatonia to foreign readers for the first time in English.

Methods: The original study was conducted about 20 years ago. The subjects were 16 persons who first visited our institutions between 1990 and 1996.

[The use of operational criteria for evaluations of mental competency].

Today, either the DSM-IV or the ICD-10 is generally used for forensic purposes, especially for evaluations of mental competency. The use of operational criteria, such as the DSM-IV, in forensic settings has some risks. Here, these risks, as well as the advantages of operational criteria and precautions for their use, are discussed.

Melancholic and reactive depression: a reappraisal of old categories.

Background: The dominant diagnostic model of the classification of depression today is unitarian; however, since Kurt Schneider (1920) introduced the concept of endogenous depression and reactive depression, the binary model has still often been used on a clinical basis. Notwithstanding this, to our knowledge, there have been no collective data on how psychiatrists differentiate these two conditions. We therefore conducted a survey to examine how psychiatrists in Japan differentiate patients with major depressive disorder who present mainly with melancholic features and those with reactive features.

[Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) accompanied by symptoms of late catatonia: what to consider and how to treat].

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) has recently often been reported to exhibit various psychiatric symptoms. However, some DLB patients do not present typical clinical courses or psychiatric symptoms. We report two DLB patients with characteristic psychiatric symptoms: a depressive state and anxiety in the early stage, and auditory hallucination, delusion of guilt, and catatonia in the later stage.

[A study on involutional melancholia].

In 1896 Kraepelin described (involutional) melancholia as a single clinical entity separate from manic-depressive psychosis. Because of the high incidence of depression in the involutional period, its symptomatic characteristics, and somewhat poor prognosis, this was recognized as valid at that time. Nowadays, the broadening concept of mood disorder denies involutional melancholia as a valid independent entity, and so it is included in mood disorders.

Musical hallucinations in schizophrenia. 2. Relations with verbal hallucinations.

The musical hallucinations reported by 33 schizophrenics who fulfilled ICD-10 diagnostic criteria were assessed semiologically. The subjects were 24 men and 9 women. The duration of 48 episodes of musical hallucinations varied.