Curtis & Gurling quote with approval Sturt & Shur's (1985) critique of same-sex concordance with the implication that the phenomenon has been explained as ascertainment bias. While some of Sturt & Shur's points are valid, we note that these are not relevant to those series of dizygotic (DZ) twins that, by including both concordant and discordant pairs, controlled for sampling bias. In these series a same-sex excess in concordant pairs is present and substantial (Table II of our paper (Crow et al, 1989)).

“To determine the effect of job loss on health an investigation was made of admissions to hospitals in 887 men five years before and three years after the closure of a Danish shipyard. The control group comprised 441 men from another shipyard. The information on hospital admissions was obtained from the Danish national register of patients. The relative risk of admission in the control group dropped significantly in terms of the number of men admitted from the study group from 1.29 four to five years before closure to 0.74 in the three years after closure. This was especially true of admissions due to accidents (1.33 to 0.46) and diseases of the digestive system (4.53 to 1.03). For diseases of the circulatory system, particularly cardiovascular diseases, the relative risk increased from 0.8 to 1.60, and from 1.0 to 2.6 respectively.

These changes in risk of illness after redundancy are probably a consequence of a change from the effects of a high risk work environment to the effects of psychosocial stresses such as job insecurity and unemployment.”

SPECT studies were carried out on three occasions in a woman with schizophrenia. Marked ‘hypofrontality’ was demonstrated during an acute phase of illness. A study during remission was within normal limits, but some return of the original defect was noted in a subsequent relapse. These findings parallel those found in PET studies of schizophrenia.

The Psychopathology Instrument for Mentally Retarded Adults, a recently developed, empirically derived measure of psychiatric disturbance for the mentally handicapped, gives a total of eight scales which correspond to DSM–III diagnostic categories. This paper reports its psychometric properties in a British population and the psychometric properties of three scales derived by factor analysis. The internal consistencies of the scales were only barely acceptable in this sample and less acceptable than in previous studies.

An eight-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome was given haloperidol to control agitation and aggressive outbursts. Withdrawal of the drug after two years was followed by Tourette-like symptoms. Subsequently neither haloperidol nor a second antipsychotic drug altered the core features of Asperger's syndrome, despite suppressing the movement disorder. His first exposure to neuroleptics was in utero.

An improvement in tardive dystonia in a patient who had received ECT for a schizophrenic psychosis is reported. The improvement suggests that the pathophysiology of tardive dystonia may involve neurotransmitter receptor changes similar to those seen in schizophrenia.

A mirror-image pair of monozygotic twins concordant for obsessional–compulsive disorder had remarkably similar clinical symptoms, and brain electrical activity mapping showed slower alpha and more theta activity than normal for their age.

A case of a mother and daughter who both believed in their own pregnancy and that of the other is described.

A classic case of folie à deux from India is described in a couple unrelated to each other. The need for socio-cultural understanding of the clinical phenomenon and its implications is stressed.

A case of paranoid psychosis induced by phentermine in a young woman with no previous history of psychiatric illness is presented.