A case of pericentric inversion chromosome 9 with an associated personality disorder is reported. There is justification for a more widespread cytogenetic screening of psychiatric disorders of this type.

The report describes three unrelated Ashkenazi Jewish women with adult GM2 gangliosidosis in whom mental symptoms were prominent, mimicking different psychiatric disorders, and thus delaying accurate diagnosis.

The treatment of two chlorpromazine-medicated chronic schizophrenics with cimetidine resulted in excessive sedation, which necessitated a reduction in chlorpromazine dosage. Eventual discontinuation of cimetidine therapy led to a return of schizophrenic symptoms, which responded to an increase in chlorpromazine dosage to previous levels.

Restless legs syndrome was observed in three patients receiving mianserin. The symptoms resolved when the treatment was discontinued or reduced.

Thomas Szasz is one of the most disliked names in contemporary psychiatry, and The Myth of Mental Illness is one of the most disapproved of books. It was Szasz's contention that illness can affect only the body and that there can be no such thing as an illness of the mind. He described mental illness as a metaphorical illness, maintaining that one can speak of a 'sick’ mind only in the same way as one can speak of a 'sick’ joke or a 'sick’ economy. He went on to argue that, if there is no mental illness, there can be no treatment for it, and no cure of it. There was, for him therefore, no medical, moral, or legal justification for involuntary psychiatric intervention or hospital admission. Such actions he considered to be crimes against humanity. He believed, after John Stuart Mill, that a man's body and soul are his own and not the state's, and that each individual has the right to do with his body whatever he pleases so long as it does not harm anyone else or infringe anybody else's rights.