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doi: 10.1177/070674378703200503pmid: 3651975
The evaluation of safe custody of ‘insane persons’ and Warrants of the Lieutenant Governor are reviewed, including the present law in the Criminal Code.Highlights of the draft legislation presented by Mr. Crosbie, former Minister of Justice, June 25, 1986 are presented.
Phillips, Michael S.; Landau, Tammy; Osbourne, Catherine
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200504pmid: 3651976
The authors compiled demographic, psychiatric, and criminological information on persons who were held on warrants of the Lieutenant Governor in Ontario. These warrants were vacated between the period 1969–1982. Of the entire population of 296 such persons, 46% were held as being Unfit to Stand Trial, 51% were Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, and the remainder were Mentally Ill prisoners. Separate analyses were conducted with the Unfit sample. The average length of confinement on a warrant was 7 years.
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200505pmid: 3308052
In double-blind trials with hundreds of patients, buspirone has proven to be as effective an anxiolytic as the benzodiazepines. It causes less sedation and motor impairment than diazepam, and may be particularly useful in geriatric patients. We conducted a 4 week double-blind, randomized trial of buspirone versus diazepam and placebo in thirty adult outpatients with generalized anxiety disorder. Maximum doses were 40 mg of diazepam or buspirone or eight placebo tablets a day. There were no significant differences in outcome between the three groups on any physician or subject measures. Some implications of this finding are discussed.
Chandarana, P.C.; Eals, M.; Steingart, A.B.; Bellamy, N.; Allen, S.
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200506pmid: 3651977
Eighty-six patients with a confirmed diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis were surveyed to assess the extent of psychiatric morbidity as indicated by two screening questionnaires, the General Health Questionnaire and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. In addition to an investigation of the concordance of the screening questionnaires, a description of demographic characteristics and measures of disability were taken. Disability due to arthritis was indicated by measures of years of chronicity, pain, duration of morning stiffness, functional level, active treatment involvement, and presence of coexisting medical problems. The relationship of physical symptoms to level of psychiatric distress was investigated.Psychiatric cases were identified using recommended cut off scores on results of the screening questionnaires. GHQ cut off scores of 6/7 identified as “cases” 31.8% of the sample. HADS subscale cut off scores of 8/9 identified 21.4% of subjects with “anxiety” and 19.0% with “depression “ scores in the morbid range. Nineteen percent of patients were found to have scores on both tests concurrently in the pathological range.
Korenblum, M.; Golombek, H.; Marton, P.; Stein, B.
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200507pmid: 3651978
This study describes disturbed personality functioning in early adolescence. A non-clinical sample of 63 thirteen year olds underwent a semi-structured psychiatric interview as part of a longitudinal study investigating the relationship between competence in personality functioning and development. The presence of personality disturbance was determined by two psychiatrists who rated the adolescents on a personality functions scale. The raters then described the type of disturbance using Axis II of DSM-III as a guideline.Forty-six percent of the sample were found to have some degree of disturbed personality functioning. Of these, over one-half fell into a cluster comprised of avoidant, dependent, compulsive, or passive-aggressive types, while another third were characterized by antisocial tendencies. Severity of disturbance was not related to type of disturbance.Ratings of behaviour by teachers and parents supported the division of subjects with personality dysfunction into two broad groups: an anxious, fearful, “quiet” cluster; and a group of more “acting out”, disturbing individuals. However, parents and teachers could not distinguish the “quiet” group from teenagers who were free of disturbed personality functioning.These data indicate that it is possible to classify a segment of a non-clinical population of young adolescents who had personality dysfunction using Axis II of DSM-III as a guideline. Furthermore, such a group of teenagers is not homogeneous. They distribute themselves into internalizing and externalizing clusters.
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200508pmid: N/A
In China, the diagnosis of depression is made much less frequently than in the West, likely because there is a somewhat lower prevalence rate and because of other factors related to culture and to the development of Chinese psychiatry. Some of the relevant factors are: 1) depressed patients often avoid seeking help because of the stigma of mental disorder; 2) many patients seek help from practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine; 3) depression is often diagnosed as schizophrenia because of diagnostic criteria that are broader for schizophrenia and narrower for affective disorder than in the West; and 4) somatization is more frequent in China and many depressives receive the label “neurasthenia”.
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200509pmid: 3651980
This study investigating the effects of verbal abuse on children and their abused parents, tends to support the clinical impression that verbal abuse may have a greater impact for a longer period of time. Although there are very few pure forms of verbal abuse, there are some parents who use verbal abuse but would not hit their children, neglect them, or involve them in sex. Verbal abuse may become an increasingly frequent form of controlling and disciplining children because of the increased awareness of physical abuse and because of the possible declining value of children. Verbal abuse may have a greater impact because the abused child has greater difficulty defending himself from the attack. Because children tend to identify with their parents, the verbal abuse by their parents becomes a way in which they then abuse themselves.
Trainor, John; Boydell, Katherine; Tibshirani, Robert
doi: 10.1177/070674378703200510pmid: 3651981
The relationship between economic change and mental disorder has been examined by several investigators over the past century. The purpose of this paper is to explore this basic relationship and determine its direction in a large Metropolitan area. A time series analysis was undertaken to investigate whether or not unemployment and indicators of mental health are related over time. Trends in the following four indicators of mental health were examined:1. Number of admissions to all psychiatric facilities serving Metropolitan Toronto.2. Number of admissions to one provincial psychiatric hospital (Queen Street Mental Health Centre) in Toronto, which serves a chronic population.3. Number of discharges from Queen Street Mental Health Centre.4. Number of admissions plus those assessed and not admitted to Queen Street Mental Health Centre.In order to assess the possible delayed effects of unemployment, correlation analyses were computed for several lag times. “Lag time” is defined here as the time delay between unemployment and its potential effects on mental health indicators. Lag times used were zero, three, six and twelve months. The best equation found was for a six month lag, indicating an inverse relationship; as unemployment increases, admissions and discharges decrease.Results suggest that there are no simple relationships between the dependent and independent variables. Observed trends may be due to much wider exogenous factors such as hospital capacity and changing admission criteria.
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