In a community sample of 418 persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, subjective needs and perceived help was measured by the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN). The mean number of reported needs was 6.2 and the mean number of unmet needs 2.6. The prevalence of needs varied substantially between the need areas from 3.6% (‘telephone’) to 84.0% (‘psychotic symptoms’). The rate of satisfaction estimated as the percentage of persons satisfied with the help provided within an area varied between 20.0% (‘telephone’) and 80.6% (‘food’).

The need areas concerning social and interpersonal functioning demonstrated the highest proportion of unmet to total needs.

In a majority of need areas the patients received more help from services than from relatives, but in the areas of social relations the informal network provided substantial help. In general the patients reported a need for help from services clearly exceeding the actual amount of help received.

In a linear regression model symptom load (BPRS) and impaired functioning (GAF) were significant predictors of the need status, explaining 30% of the variance in total needs and 20% of the variance in unmet needs.

It is concluded that the mental health system fails to detect and alleviate needs in several areas of major importance to schizophrenic patients. Enhanced collaboration between the care system and the informal network to systematically map the need profile of the patients seems necessary to minimise the gap between perceived needs and received help.

The deinstitutionalisation process in Finland’s psychiatric healthcare did not start until the late 1980s. Our aim is to evaluate how the use of psychiatric inpatient treatment was associated with deinstitutionalisation given the changes in the modality of treatment ideology (years 1987–1991) as well as being due to economic pressures (years 1991–1995). Special emphasis is given on the inpatient treatment of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

Data was retrieved using the national hospital discharge register of all treatment periods in psychiatric hospitals and treatment periods due to psychiatric disorders in other hospitals. Three years (1987, 1991, and 1995) were compared. Four healthcare districts in northern Finland were studied. Resource use was measured by number of treatment periods and inpatient days in relation to population. Psychiatric inpatient treatment was reduced in 1987–1991, when resources in community care increased. During the period of economic pressures (1991–1995), when community care resources no longer increased, inpatient treatment started to rise again. Over the whole period, psychiatric treatment in primary care institutions increased.

Reduction of psychiatric beds results in increasing inpatient treatment in non-specialist institutions, especially when community care fails to serve the patients. In the future it is important to evaluate whether the quality of care remains in the standard of specialised services when treatment shifts away from the specialist level.

The present study investigated the occurrence and the clinical correlates of psychiatric co-morbidity in a sample of 64 patients with delusional disorder (DD). Subjects were evaluated with a semi-structured interview for the collection of demographic and clinical features of the disorder; co-morbid axis 1 disorders were determined according to the clinical interview using DSM-IV by Othmer and Othmer. Delusional disorder subjects with and without co-morbid diagnoses were compared to investigate whether the presence of another psychiatric disorder influenced the clinical features of the illness.

Seventy-two percent of the subjects had at least one additional lifetime psychiatric diagnosis. High lifetime co-morbidity was found with affective disorders, whose onset generally had been subsequent to the onset of DD. Patients with at least one co-morbid disorder (N = 46) had an earlier age at onset, presented for the first psychiatric consultation at an earlier age, and were younger at index evaluation for this study with respect to patients without co-morbidity (N = 18). Types of DD differed significantly according to the presence/absence of lifetime co-morbid disorders: DD patients with co-morbidity were in most cases persecutory type (54.4%) while DD patients without co-morbidity were mixed type (66.7%).

Our data indicate that there is a considerable proportion of patients whose DDr is strictly connected with other co-occurring psychiatric disorders (mainly affective disorders), which exert an influence on the phenomenology of the illness.

Forty-one depressive and 57 nondepressive patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM, type 2) were compared for demographic and clinical variables. The depressive patients were more likely to have a history of depression than non-depressive patients. The female patients were more likely to have depression than males. Results suggest that depression in NIDDM was only associated with female gender and previous depressive episodes.

The aim of this study is to describe the situation of Spanish obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients and compare it to that of the general population and other patient groups.

Animal models are often used for preclinical research on the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders. Whereas many are employed to screen new therapeutic agents, few of them are used to study the genetic bases of psychiatric diseases, probably because of the complex genetic determinism underlying quantitative behavioral traits such as mood, personality or intelligence. The present article presents a short review introducing an analysis model using mi the marker strains model. Using this model it is possible both to display genetic determinism data and to locate some of the chromosomal fragments involved in the regulation of anxiogenic processes. At present it cannot accurately determine the position of one or more genes, but it does provide a valuable means of ‘scanning’ the genome for an approximation. Through genetic analysis, using the model, an attempt will be made to identify autosomal fragments which may be involved in two behavioural traits: anxiety and chemical-induced seizures. In this paper, after reviewing theoretical aspects of looking for genes involved in behaviour, we will successively introduce studies in genetic topics in psychiatric human studies as well as appropriated behavioural animal studies. Then we will present a genetic model in mice which allows us to locate chromosomal fragments associated with a behavioural trait: multiple marker strains.