The older schizophrenic patients continued to experience psychotic and nonpsychotic symptoms in senescence. Their positive symptoms were moderately less severe and their negative symptoms and cognitive impairment were significantly more severe than those of the younger patients. Somatic treatment appeared not to be responsible for the severe cognitive impairment and negative symptoms of the older patients. These data are relevant to chronically hospitalized geriatric schizophrenic patients but not necessarily to all geriatric schizophrenic patients.

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A study was made of the B1-N neurotic tendency scale (Bernreuter Personality Inventory) with the following groups of patients at the New York Psychiatric Institute: manic-depressive (manic), manic-depressive (depressed), dementia praecox, psychoneurosis, and "others" (general paralysis, psychopathic personality, etc.). The test does not clearly determine neurotic tendency in individual psychiatric patients. A comparison of case history items with answers on the neurotic tendency scale shows a 73% mean agreement. The greatest source of disagreement seems to be in contradiction between case history and patient's opinion on the questionnaire. A study of the most diagnostic items shows that "Yes" answers tend to have a high agreement with outside validating criteria. The method of internal consistency applied to this scale with normal and psychotic cases shows a similar distribution of scores for both groups. A high score on the neurotic scale is indicative of maladjustment, but a low score does not necessarily signify emotional stability.

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