[Prejudice and evidence, oppositions and convergencies in today's psychiatry].

The notion of prejudice in epistemology starts in the early times of modern thought, together with the first reflections on science. Tracks of the notion of prejudice can be followed right up to our own days, all throughout the succession of epistemologies, with such notion always opposed to the notion of evidence. However, what in one epistemology stands for prejudice, is labeled as evidence in subsequent epistemologies, and the other way round.

[A historical-epistemological perspective of the ontological problem of Positivism. Positivism and psychiatry].

The present article reviews epistemological problems related to the philosophical and scientific current known as Positivism. The revision begins with the study of the historical period during which the Logical Positivism emerges (early in the decade of 1920); and finishes with the analysis of its influence on psychiatry and its relation with other epistemological currents in the same period. The article reviews the historical and epistemological outlook at te beginning of the XX th century, when the problem of language became ontologically outstanding.

[Epidemiologic study about the variation of the demand in mental health in the last two decades].

We have investigated age, sex, nationality, origin, diagnosis and treatment types in ambulatory patients of the External Clinics of the Division Health Mental of the General Hospital for Acute Patients "Dr. Teodoro Alvarez", of 600 Clinical Histories obtained in the years 1980, 1990 and 2000. These data have been extracted with the purpose of studying probable changes in the social and psychopathologic conformation of the patients, in the last two decades.