Late-onset dementia is associated with lower mental ability scores in childhood. Early-onset dementia mental ability scores did not differ from locally matched control subjects or from late-onset dementia. Mechanisms that account for the link between lower mental ability and late-onset dementia are probably not relevant to early-onset dementia.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between childhood social adjustment and personality and adult social adjustment and symptoms in a population of schizophrenic patients. Adult social adjustment was assessed in 43 patients by means of the Social Adjustment Scale Self-Report, and symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Subjective Deficit Syndrome Scale. Childhood social adjustment and personality were assessed by means of interviews with patients' mothers. Patients displayed poorer adult social adjustment than a normal population, but no significant differences existed between the sexes. A strong association was found between childhood and adult social adjustment in male subjects. Stronger correlations between social adjustment and current symptoms, particularly positive symptoms, were found in females than in males. Associations in males were stronger for negative symptoms. We observed significant correlations between poor adult social adjustment and severity of illness and abnormalities of personality and social adjustment in childhood. There were substantial differences between the sexes in these associations.

Schizophrenic patients saw their parents as showing much less warmth, and the severity of currents symptoms was associated with perceived parental rearing attitudes. The hostility component of high expressed emotion may be a parental trait which exists before the illness begins.

We have confirmed clinical correlates of 'neurodevelopmental' schizophrenia but found no association between these and obstetric complications or a family history of severe mental disorder.

CORRESPONDENCE elderly patients with refractory depression under going lithium augmentation, despite therapeutic doses of lithium and antidepressants.