Data were collected on a consecutive 6 month sample of women aged 15–44 years attending their catchment area Casualty Department because of parasuicide. Information included age and childbirth within the previous year. Using this information and catchment area data on population size and births, an odds ratio for parasuicide in postnatal as compared to nonpostnatal women was calculated. Five of 131 study subjects had delivered a baby in the previous 12 months. The odds ratio was calculated to be 0·43 (95% confidence interval 0·17–0·95). These findings suggest that the rate of parasuicide in the first postnatal year is low despite the high rate of psychiatric morbidity at this time. The result supports previous findings on suicide and suggests that postnatal women, despite their high rates of psychiatric disorder, are protected against fatal and non-fatal self harm. The implications for postnatal and suicide prevention services are discussed.

Previous studies have suggested that schizophrenia is characterized by an asymmetry of visuo-spatial attention, in particular that acute unmedicated schizophrenics demonstrate relative inattention to right hemispace, whereas chronically medicated patients demonstrate the opposite pattern. In the present study, 30 unmedicated schizophrenic patients, 32 chronically medicated schizophrenic patients, 30 patients suffering from major depression and 60 healthy controls were assessed using two measures of hemispatial attentional neglect, namely letter and star cancellation. The results demonstrated that the chronic schizophrenic group made more total omissions for star cancellation (in both right and left hemispace), but that there was no difference between the groups in terms of omission asymmetry for either letter or star cancellation.