Early recognition and adequate treatment of both somatic diseases and mental disorders, particularly depression, as well as early recognition of suicide risk among nursing home residents, are needed in order to prevent suicide.

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-40) in adolescents. Internal consistency, factor structure, and discriminant and concurrent validity of the DSQ-40 were studied in 211 adolescent psychiatric outpatients aged 13 to 19 years and 199 age-matched and sex-matched controls. Principal components analysis yielded four internally consistent components: mature, neurotic, image-distorting, and immature defense styles. The outpatients reported more immature, image-distorting, and neurotic styles and less mature style than did the controls, suggesting adequate discriminant validity. As a demonstration of convergent and concurrent validity, the severity of psychiatric symptoms assessed by the General Health Questionnaire and psychosocial adjustment assessed by the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale correlated theoretically meaningfully with the different defense styles. The DSQ-40 appears to be a reliable and valid instrument for adolescents.

Reduction of psychiatric beds did not generally increase the mortality of patients with schizophrenia. However, patients in their early years of illness experienced increased mortality after the steepest bed reduction. Improved recognition and treatment of somatic illness would benefit patients with schizophrenia.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the diagnostic validity of schizophrenia in the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register (FHDR) with a large, epidemiologically representative sample using a multidiagnostic approach (DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, ICD-10), and to find additional criteria that could be used to improve the validity of schizophrenia diagnosis in future register-based research that utilizes the FHDR. The study population consisted of all individuals (n=877) who were born in Helsinki, Finland, between 1 January 1951 and 31 December 1960, and who had had at least one diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder or schizoaffective disorder in the FHDR. All their available hospital case notes were collected. The total number of subjects for whom case notes were obtained was 806. We used the OPCRIT system (version 3.4) to produce diagnoses according to ICD-10, DSM-III-R and DSM-IV criteria based on the information extracted from the hospital case notes. We examined the distribution of the DSM-III-R, DSM-IV and ICD-10 diagnoses generated by the OPCRIT and calculated the proportion of individuals who received the same diagnosis in the FHDR and in the OPCRIT assessment. The proportion of subjects who received a core schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or schizophreniform disorder) in both the FHDR and OPCRIT assessment varied between 75% (DSM-III-R criteria) and 78% (ICD-10 criteria). Of the subjects with a narrow schizophrenia diagnosis in the FHDR, between 74% (DSM-IV) and 78% (ICD-10) received a diagnosis of schizophrenia in the reassessment depending on the diagnostic criteria applied. Eighty per cent of those who had received a core schizophrenia spectrum FHDR diagnosis after 1982 (vs. 56% of those who had received their last schizophrenia diagnosis in 1982 or before) received a DSM-IV diagnosis of core schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Of the 58 subjects in the sample who had been given at various times diagnoses of both core schizophrenia diagnosis and bipolar I diagnosis in FHDR, 43% received a core schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis according to DSM-IV criteria. The validity of the FHDR schizophrenia diagnosis is acceptable for large-scale register studies and comparable with that of other Nordic registers. Diagnostic validity can be further improved by selecting subjects who have core schizophrenia spectrum disorder as the latest diagnosis, by omitting cases diagnosed before 1982, and by excluding cases with a register diagnoses of both a core schizophrenia spectrum and bipolar I disorder.

Background: Accurate assessment of suicidality is of major importance in both clinical and research settings. The Scale for Suicidal Ideation (SSI) is a well-established clinician-rating scale but its suitability to adolescents has not been studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity, and to test an appropriate cutoff threshold for the SSI in a depressed adolescent outpatient population and controls.