Compulsive buying: an overlooked entity.

Compulsive buying is an under-recognised entity among Indian psychiatrists. A Medline search, hand searching of journals and direct communications with lead investigators in compulsive buying have generated numerous studies. Overseas data indicate a community prevalence between 1% and 8% .

Promoting recovery: service user and staff perceptions of resilience provided by a new Early Intervention in Psychosis service.

Aim: The principles and practice of recovery are guiding many changes in mental health service provision. As a new Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) service, we were interested in finding out if both staff and users perceive the service as promoting resilience and in turn, recovery.

Methods: A naturalistic sample of service users and staff completed the Organizational Climate questionnaire to assess the degree to which the service promotes resilience in overcoming a first episode psychosis.

A retrospective sibling study of childhood adjustment in adults with substance use disorders.

Purpose: : Research has suggested that people who develop serious substance use disorders have delinquent traits as children before using any illicit drugs. This study was designed to retrospectively identify differences in antisocial and delinquent behavior between siblings discordant for serious substance use disorders.

Methods: : A retrospective survey was conducted of 50 pairs of adult siblings who were discordant for serious substance use disorders.

Developing service quality in mental healtlh services.

Through a literature review, this paper demonstrates that there is a lack of knowledge about quality management within the mental health services. Ideas about quality from the wider services sector are then discussed, and a case study of a mental health scenario is provided. It is argued that health service generally, and mental health services in particular, have much to gain from becoming more closely aligned with the wider field of knowledge of quality management.

Diagnosis and incidence of prion (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) disease: a retrospective archival survey with implications for future research.

Reliable identification of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in the UX has become essential following the suggestion that prion disease in cattle (BSE) might transmit, accidentally, to humans who eat contaminated beef. Recent data suggest that some cases of CJD may be clinically unrecognized; in order to examine this proposal we reviewed all cases of dementia (n = 1000+) collected in the Runwell Hospital Brain Archive between 1964 and 1990. We identified 19 cases of spongiform encephalopathy of which only 11 were diagnosed before death.

Epilepsy, psychosis, and schizophrenia: clinical and neuropathologic correlations.

This study examines the relationship between epilepsy and psychosis. It compares clinical, EEG, and neuropathologic data from a group of subjects who had both epilepsy and psychosis with similar information from another group of patients who had epilepsy but no evidence of psychotic illness. We examined, blind to clinical diagnosis, gross and microscopic material from whole-brain specimens from 10 patients diagnosed with epilepsy plus schizophrenia-like psychosis, nine subjects diagnosed with epilepsy plus "epileptic psychosis," and 36 individuals with epilepsy (21 from an epileptic colony and 15 from the community at large) who had no history of psychosis (n = 10 + 9 + 21 + 15 = 55).

Schizophrenia and the brain: a prospective clinico-neuropathological study.

The neuropathological results from a prospective, systematically assessed, series of 56 schizophrenic patients and 56 age- and sex-matched normal controls have been presented. When compared with the normal controls, the brains of the schizophrenic subjects showed a significant reduction in brain weight and brain length with a concomitant increase in ventricular size. (All findings relate to measurements made after formalin fixation).

Macrophage histology in paraffin-embedded multiple sclerosis plaques is demonstrated by the monoclonal pan-macrophage marker HAM-56: correlation with chronicity of the lesion.

Using the monoclonal antibody HAM-56 with the avidin-biotin method on recent or archival paraffin-embedded tissue from multiple sclerosis brains, we have been able to distinguish between acute, chronic active and inactive lesions. HAM-56 stains all macrophages, monocytes and at least some microglia; it is the only pan-macrophage marker to our knowledge that can be satisfactorily used on conventional paraffin sections. A much narrower range of mainly perivascular macrophages in acute plaques of multiple sclerosis is stained with MAC-387, anti-muramidase and anti-alpha1-anti-trypsin.

The cerebral vasculature in dementia pugilistica.

The brains of 22 ex-boxers were examined histologically to determine the frequency of recent or old haemorrhage. Four boxers had died from an acute intracerebral bleed, usually soon after a boxing bout. Seven of the other 18 showed evidence of previous perivascular haemorrhage, as detected by Perls' ferrocyanide test for iron, and a similar number showed minor degrees of meningeal or subpial siderosis, consistent with previous meningeal bleeding; cerebellar siderosis was present in six cases.

Reshaping the psyche. The concurrent improvement in appearance and mental state after rhinoplasty.

Rhinoplasty patients and matched elective-surgery controls completed the Facial Appearance Sorting Test, the General Health Questionnaire, a Repertory Grid and the Masculinity/Femininity Scale. Rhinoplasty applicants perceived appearance similarly to, and downrated their own appearance to the same extent as, controls. Impaired appearance and psychiatric symptoms are integral parts of the 'rhinoplasty applicant syndrome', but the degree to which they occur is not positively correlated.