Schizophrenia is associated with altered neural development. We assessed neurological soft signs (NSS) and dermatoglyphic anomalies (total a–b ridge count (TABRC) and total finger ridge count) in 15 pairs of twins concordant and discordant for schizophrenia. Within-pair differences in both NSS and TABRC scores were significantly greater in discordant compared to concordant monozygotic pairs. There was no significant difference in NSS and TABRC scores between subjects with schizophrenia and their co-twins without the illness. However, monozygotic discordant twins with schizophrenia had higher ABRCs on their right hands compared to their co-twins without the illness. These findings suggest that an unidentified environmental event acting between weeks 6 and 15 of gestation affects the development of monozygotic twins who go on to develop schizophrenia but does not have a corresponding effect on their co-twins who do not develop the illness. The effect of such an event on dermatoglyphic profiles appears lateralised to the right hand in affected twins.

Background: Evidence from regions where there have been severe dietary restriction suggests that individuals in utero during periods of starvation may subsequently be at increased risk of schizophrenia. Because Ireland was the location of a major nineteenth century famine an attempt has been made to determine whether any such evidence for famine/schizophrenia association can be found.

Method: The data used derive mainly from the Annual Reports on the District, Criminal and Private Lunatic Asylums supplied by the Inspectors of Lunacy in Ireland for the relevant years. Nineteenth century diagnostic labels have been adjusted to conform to schizophrenia as currently understood. Evidence relating to a possible schizophrenia increase in famine-related emigrants is examined.

Results: There was an increase in first admission rates for schizophrenia of 85.7% from 1860 to 1875. Admissions for other disorders, chiefly melancholia, also increased. Similar admission increases were evident in other jurisdictions over the same period. Data relating to the mental health of famine – migrating Irish are sparse and of difficult interpretation.

Conclusion: The evidence from available data sources attempting to link the Irish famines of the 1840s with a subsequent increase in the incidence of schizophrenia is equivocal and inconclusive.

The metamorphosis from an extensive mental hospital system of care, rooted in a culture and tradition of self-sufficiency and isolation, to the concept and practise of delivery of psychiatric care in general hospitals is described. The obstacles, psychological and practical, to be overcome in this change process are outlined. The place of the general hospital psychiatric unit in psychiatric and general medical care is outlined. Relevant matters of design and management are briefly explored.

Objectives: Re-admissions to inpatient psychiatric care are now so frequent as to be designated the ‘revolving door’ phenomenon and constitute 72% of admissions to Irish inpatient psychiatric units and hospitals. It is commonly believed that treatment non-adherence with aftercare following inpatient discharge contributes to readmission. Attempts to improve adherence and reduce or shorten readmission through compulsory community treatment orders have been made in several countries including Scotland in 2005 and, from November 2008, England and Wales. Provision for conditional discharge in Ireland has already been furnished by the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 but has been compromised by the inability to impose enforcement of conditions. The paper aims to determine whether compulsory community treatment orders are effective in improving adherence and reducing re-admission and whether, in consequence, their introduction in Ireland should be considered.

Method: The legislative measures adopted to improve treatment adherence and thereby reduce re-admissions are presented. The evidence of their effectiveness is examined.

Results: Evaluation of the effectiveness of community treatment orders is limited and hindered by confounding factors. What evidence there is does not provide convincing evidence of their utility.

Conclusions: It is concluded that there is insufficient evidence to advocate their early introduction in Ireland in civil mental health legislation. Instead a wait and see policy is suggested with critical assessment of the outcome of such developments in Scotland and England and Wales. In addition further research on the characteristics of revolving door patients in Ireland and the circumstances determining their readmission is advocated. There is an anomaly in the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 which allows of conditional discharge but does not provide for its enforcement.

Objectives: De-institutionalisation and the expansion of community services have resulted in a reduction in the number of inpatient admissions in Ireland having fallen by 31% between 1986 and 2006. However, despite this, readmissions continue to account for over 70% of all admissions. The policy document A Vision for Change identified many shortcomings in the current model of provision of mental health services, making recommendations for the future development of community-based services with emphasis on outreach components such as homecare, crisis intervention and assertive outreach approaches. These recommendations are reviewed in relation to readmissions and the impact they may have on reducing the revolving door phenomenon.

Method: Three main intervention programmes essential to the delivery of an effective community-based service outlined and recommended by A Vision for Change, along with other pertinent factors, are discussed in relation to how they might reduce readmissions in Ireland. A series of Pearson correlations between Irish inpatient admissions rates and rates of outpatient attendances and provision of community mental health services are carried out and examined to explain possible relationships between increasing/decreasing admission rates and provision/attendances at community services. International literature is reviewed to determine the effectiveness of these intervention programmes in reducing admissions and readmissions and their relevance to the Irish situation is discussed.

Conclusions: Whilst A Vision for Change goes a long way towards advocating a more person-centred, recovery oriented and integrated model of service delivery, it is apparent from the consistently high proportion of readmissions in Ireland that there are still many shortcomings in service provision. The availability of specialised community-based programmes of care is as yet relatively uncommon in Ireland and uneven in geographical distribution. A considerable improvement in their provision, quantitatively and qualitatively, is required to impact on the revolving door phenomenon. In addition a re-configuration of existing catchment populations is required if they are to be successfully introduced and expanded.

The 1901 Census of Population returns provide a unique opportunity to examine the broad characteristics of institutionalised mental illness in one county over a century ago by complementing and extending the information contained in the main statutory source, the Report of the Inspector of Lunacy. This paper presents these characteristics as they relate to the first area on which such data have become publicly accessible - County Clare.

Objectives: The most recent census of psychiatric inpatients (Daly and Walsh, 2006) examined the decline of the long-stay population (both new and old long-stay) from 1963 to 2006. The aim of the present study was to identify new long-stay patients (patients in hospital between one and five years) in the 2006 psychiatric in-patient census and follow them up one year later to determine the number remaining as inpatients, ie. not having been discharged

Methods: New long-stay patients were extracted from the 2006 psychiatric inpatient census data base and were followed up one year later.

Results: Sixty-eight per cent (315/460) of new longstay patients on 31/03/06 were still resident in units and hospitals one year later on 31/03/07, the majority in psychiatric hospitals Forty-two per cent (133/315) of patients had a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, 13% (40/315) of depressive disorder, 11% (33/315) of organic mental disorder and 8% of intellectual disability (24/315). The number of new long-stay patients discharged or who died showed a sharp decline on previous years.

Conclusions: Unless current services are improved and extended as advocated in A Vision for Change, it will be a number of years before this population leaves psychiatric hospitals and such hospitals can close because of the lack of suitable alternatives. In accordance with policy recommendations, the continuing requirement for the development of specialised rehabilitation services to cater for the broad needs of those who remain in psychiatric hospitals is of the utmost importance.

This paper reports an investigation of the incidence of schizophrenia in Ireland by means of standardized case-finding procedures. Our findings do not support the popular belief, based on first admissions figures, of a raised incidence in Ireland. We show this to have been considerably overestimated.

In-patient data show high rates for mental illness in the Republic of Ireland, particularly for schizophrenia. ‘One-day prevalence’ figures from the Three County psychiatric case register have been compared with similar data from the Camberwell register. The results confirm much higher contact rates in Ireland.

This study, reporting a ten-year investigation of suicide in Kildare, found that the suicide rate based on clinical assessment of coroner's records was very close to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) figure for Kildare and for Ireland as a whole for the same period. Dublin data for 1977–1981 confirmed these findings. Since in the 1960s similar clinical assessment concluded that CSO rates underestimated suicide by a factor of two or over, we believe that changes in CSO coding procedures whereby more deaths are now coded to suicide than was the case in the past have resulted in current CSO data reflecting accurately the rate of clinical suicide. There has been more than a three-fold increase in CSO suicide rates in Ireland between 1968 and 1987. Even allowing for improved CSO practices there still remains a considerable excess of suicide deaths which indicates a doubling of ‘real’ suicide in Ireland over these twenty years.

Twenty years after Ireland adopted an external supervisory board model to promote public confidence in the handling of complaints against the police (the Garda Síochána), it had to replace it with a cross between the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and the Independent Police Complaints Commission in England and Wales. This paper examines the nature and scale of the board's failure and offers a critique of the internal and external factors responsible. It focuses, in particular, on how the police and the government, acting separately and in combination, managed to smother the potential of the supervisory board model. It also offers insights into how the board contributed to its own failure. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the fact that several of these negative forces can also be active in the new complaints procedure that commenced operations in 2007.

Objectives: By the early 19th century the social manifestations of psychiatric disorder had become a matter of public and parliamentary pre-occupation in Ireland. This concern led to legislative provision for the establishment of a national system of district lunatic asylums. This paper describes some details of the early foundation of this system.

Method: Examination of House of Commons papers on the lunatic asylums of Ireland 1835-1839.

Results: Details are presented concerning the activities, numbers of residents, admissions and costs of the 11 asylums in operation by 1839.

Conclusions: By 1839 the operational, administrative and cultural characteristics of a national asylum system that would take another half century to complete and would extend well into the 20th century had been established.