摘要:

The following is a presentation of the first results of a cross-cultural study of depressive symptomatology, within the framework of a larger research project which is still in progress. Southern Italian and northern Swedish depressed patients completed a self-rating scale for depression and were rated by the doctors using a subscale of the Comprehensive Psychological Rating Scale. In the doctors’ ratings Italian patients scored higher for variables referring to motor retardation and hypochondriasis, and Swedish patients for variables referring to inability to feel and agitation. These findings were in line with expectations. In contrast, in the self-ratings Swedish patients scored higher for the variables weight loss, tachycardia and agitation and Italian patients for hopelessness and loss of interest and dissatisfaction. This discrepancy between results in self-ratings and doctors’ ratings might reflect cultural differences either in the way patients in the two countries are able to express verbally their symptoms or in the way doctors from the two countries give weight to different symptoms. Taking the results of the two ratings together as a general measure of the severity of the depressive disorder, patients in the two places appeared to be quite alike. Since the two centers are engaged in comprehensive investigations of depressed patients, the last-mentioned finding suggests that the populations in the two centers are comparable as concerns severity.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000283904

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1981

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

This study focuses on the ego function of impulse control in the borderline patient. An attempt is made to ascertain whether the borderline patient is characterized by an obvious defect in this area, and whether this defect can distinguish the borderline patient from other groups of patients. 94 schizophrenics, 34 borderline patients and 21 patients with character disorders admitted to the psychiatry service at a Veterans Administration hospital were compared. The conclusion was that there was an obvious defect in impulse control in the borderline group, quantitatively different from the character disorder group, and qualitatively different from the schizophrenic group.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000283905

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1981

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

A principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation was applied to behavioral and physiological data from a group of 25 subjects comprising normals and depressives, in whom event-related slow brain potentials were recorded during performance of a fixed foreperiod, reaction time task. Five of the seven factors thus evinced were labelled ‘activation’, ‘inhibition’, ‘resilience’, ‘depressivity-neuroticism’ and ‘extraversion’, the remaining two factors being related to arousal in an unspecified manner. Although no clear-cut partitioning of variance into trait, state and task-related components was achieved, the contention is advanced that measurement of these factors and their patterning might contribute to psychophysiological diagnosis, provided they are substantiated

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000283906

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1981

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

Personality factors are known to influence the augmenting/reducing tendency in evoked potentials and also the results obtained from pain-relieving methods in chronic pain conditions. In this study 30 chronic pain patients treated with high frequency transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation were evaluated by means of personality inventories and visual evoked potentials (VEP). The results indicate that the group for whom the treatment had a positive outcome had an augmenting tendency in VEP and also significantly differed as regards certain factors in the EPI (high values in the L scale) and the CMPS (high values in factors I, II, IX, X and index I, V) personality inventories.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000283907

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1981

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

41 patients with a depressive syndrome in middle age (mean age 55 years) were investigated. 19 of them had purely monopolar depressive syndromes without any organic features; 22 patients had a depressive syndrome associated with an organic brain disease (11 vascular, 11 primary degenerative disease). In all patients psychiatric and neurological investigations, a WAIS test, an EEG and a computer tomography were performed. The clinical findings were significantly different in both groups of depression but there was still a considerable overlap of symptoms. The EEG was inconclusive, the psychological test (WAIS) and the computer tomography showed the clearest separation between the organic and the nonorganic depressions leaving only 10% of inconclusive findings. Therefore, it may be concluded that the differential diagnosis of organic or nonorganic depressive syndrome in middle age cannot be made on the basis of one investigation on its own but on the combined results of clinical, functional, and morphological examinations.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000283908

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1981

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

88 patients with ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ methods of suicide attempts are compared and described. The results show several differences between both groups of patients: (1) In the choice of a ‘soft’ method painlessness played a superior role. Patients who had chosen a ‘hard’ method were far less sensitive to pain, or the experience of pain had extensively faded. (2) Men with ‘hard’methods seemed to be more needy than men with ‘soft’ methods. (3) Men and women of the ‘hard’ group (preponderantly wrist cutters) showed a stronger and earlier beginning of conflict denial than patients of the ‘soft’ group. Therefore, immediate crisis intervention seems to be especially indicated. (4) Attention should be drawn to the countertransference reactions of helpers in contact with patients who had employed differ

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000283909

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1981

数据来源: Karger