SynopsisA comparison was made of the mental state of patients with chronic epilepsy and matched controls with locomotor disorders, using a reliable psychiatric interview technique. The symptom profiles of the two groups were similar. The profiles of temporal lobe and other epileptics were also similar. Epileptic patients with a high current psychiatric morbidity were characterized by a raised incidence of previous neurotic illness and raised neuroticism scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory.

No abstract

Eight hundred psychiatric patients and eight hundred controls completed a handedness preference questionnaire. There was no significant difference in handedness between the two samples, but, contrary to some previous reports, excess of sinistrality was not associated with male sex. The distribution of handedness was similar in neurotics and controls, but among psychotics in general there was a higher proportion of fully right-handed subjects. Among schizophrenics there was a significantly higher proportion of left-handed writers among males than females. There were relatively few left-handed writers of either sex among patients with affective psychosis. Female patients with personality disorders had a significantly higher proportion of mixed handedness than controls. The findings are considered in relation to suggestions that functional psychoses may be associated with asymmetrical cerebral dysfunction, and that poorly lateralized function may be related to anomalous psychological development.

Four patients have been described who were believed to be suffering from hysterical attacks. The recent literature on hysterical seizures has been examined and the four new patients were added to two other reported series to provide a profile of 25 cases. Preceding or accompanying physical illness was a common finding, and 32 percent of subjects had a previous history of neurological disease. The existence of a substrate of CNS damage is supported by the finding of EEG abnormalities in 40 percent of patients. In other ways the cases resembled classical descriptions of subjects liable to hysterical illness. The operation of either dissociative or conversion mechanisms during the attacks was difficult to demonstrate, and suggestion was sometimes the only factor found to account for the form of the symptoms. Further studies to examine the nature of the relationship between brain damage and hysterical disorders appear justified.

No abstract