Temporal lobe lesions and psychosis in multiple sclerosis.

Lesions in the temporal lobe are associated with psychiatric manifestations in multiple sclerosis. The authors describe this case of a young man with multiple sclerosis who presented with first-episode psychosis and had acute lesions in the temporal lobe. He was successfully treated with olanzapine and β-interferon.

Acute functional psychoses: treatment with zuclopenthixol dihydrochloride ('Clopixol') tablets.

An assessment of the efficacy and tolerability of zuclopenthixol dihydrochloride tablets in the treatment of acute psychotic episodes was undertaken in 63 patients in an open multi-centre study. Most patients prior to entering the study had received other neuroleptic drugs, but with inadequate effect. During the 10-week study, the dosage of zuclopenthixol dihydrochloride tablets could be adjusted to obtain optimum clinical benefit.

The hospital anxiety and depression scale.

A self-assessment scale has been developed and found to be a reliable instrument for detecting states of depression and anxiety in the setting of an hospital medical outpatient clinic. The anxiety and depressive subscales are also valid measures of severity of the emotional disorder. It is suggested that the introduction of the scales into general hospital practice would facilitate the large task of detection and management of emotional disorder in patients under investigation and treatment in medical and surgical departments.

The effect of the use of the International Classification of Diseases 9th revision: upon hospital in-patient diagnoses.

This study compares the diagnostic terminology used for 592 consecutive discharges from a psychiatric unit before and after teaching psychiatric trainees the use of the ICD-9 classificatory system. The results show a marked increase in specificity of diagnostic labels, with a decrease of diagnoses with the term 'not otherwise specified', and an increase in the diagnoses of organic psychoses, paranoid and hebephrenic schizophrenia and depressive neurosis. The implications of this for training about diagnosis, clinical practice and recording of data for national statistics are discussed.