A group of patients, initially 67 individuals, with chronic schizophrenia were studied on repeated occasions during 1 year and followed up after 3 years. The patients were given depot neuroleptics, either fluphenazine decanoate or pipotiazine palmitate, at intervals of 1 month. The symptom scores from three rating scales were subjected to factor analysis. Four factors were found to explain the variance satisfactorily: one comprising psychopathological symptoms specific for schizophrenia, one relating to contact disturbances, one psychomotor activity and one representing neurotic symptoms. Analysis of these factors revealed certain differences between the treatment groups over time and demonstrated the effect of combination of psychotherapy and neuroleptic drugs in a subgroup of patients. This type of analysis of treatment results might contribute to improving our knowledge of rehabilitation of schizophrenic patients and help us to draw up giudelines for selection of suitable measures.

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Thirty-eight in-patients with endogenous- and 20 in-patients with non-endogenous depression, took part in a multi-centre 3-week double-blind trial where patients were randomly allocated to treatment with either 6 g L-tryptophan or 150 mg imipramine daily. Item analysis of Hamilton ratings, before the investigation and weekly during the trial period demonstrated few statistically different mean scores on individual items between the two treatment groups. After 3 weeks' treatment a statistically significant item mean reduction on the 0.1% level was found in the item Agitation in favour of imipramine-treated, and in the item Work and Activities in favour of L-tryptophan-treated endogenously depressed patients. After 3 weeks' treatment a statistically significant item mean reduction on the 5% level was found in the item Suicide in favour of imipramine-treated non-endogenously depressed patients. The present study has shown that, after 3 weeks' treatment, imipramine and L-tryptophan has decreased the mean score on individual items of HRS in about the same degree.

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