The findings emphasize the diagnostic and therapeutic usefulness, specificity, and sensitivity of EtG as a marker of recent alcohol use. Such a test is needed in numerous settings, including alcohol and drug treatment (to detect lapse/relapse), in safety-sensitive work settings where use is dangerous or in other settings where use may be inappropriate (e.g., such as driving, workplace, pregnancy, or monitoring physicians or other professionals who are in recovery and working), or for testing other groups (such as children or those with medical problems) where alcohol use would be unhealthy or unsafe. The health, social and socioeconomic benefits arising from the future use of these markers is hard to overestimate.

No abstract

A case of subcutaneous fat necrosis (SCFN) in a newborn who had suffered from asphyxia secondary to meconium aspiration is described. During the third week of life, bluish-red subcutaneous nodules were noticed. A biopsy of the lesions showed subcutaneous necrosis with fat cells containing needle-like crystals with reactive inflammatory infiltrates. Peripheral transient thrombocytopenia was observed prior to the appearance of subcutaneous fat necrosis. The good prognosis is stressed.

This report deals with the relation of suicide to mental illness in the elderly. Our investigation of this relation proceeds from the following two points of view: First, we asked whether the fact that the elderly are most at risk of committing suicide is confounded with their increased psychiatric morbidity. Second, we asked to what extent suicides of older mentally ill persons are definitely created by their mental illness. The sample includes 310 suicides of psychiatric in-patients. These were explored in the course of a multicentre study of 6 psychiatric state hospitals in the south of the Federal Republic of Germany. The method of analysis involved the motives of the suicidal acts. Results demonstrate that the age is an autonomous risk factor and not to be confounded with the psychiatric morbidity. Psychiatric morbidity of older suicides is not sufficient to explain the suicidal act. Moreover, we found that if mental illness played a part, motives reflecting aspects of chronicity predominated motives reflecting psychopathology (i.e. feeling of being persecuted, loosing mind) of the suicidal patients. Results are discussed with special reference to preventing and managing suicides in the elderly.

The value of the reintegration and rehabilitation of inpatients vocationally was studied. Certain of the vocational experiences (unemployment and stressful working conditions) of former psychiatric inpatients were examined, with attention being paid to their stabilizing or destabilizing effect on symptomatic behaviour. A cohort of 230 first-time admissions for treatment of various disorders were interviewed while hospitalized and 1 year later. A 20-item list prepared by INFAS was used for indexing stressful working conditions. Psychopathological states were assessed with the help of the Present State Examination of Wing et al. (1973). The results indicate that mentally ill persons (especially those with organic or affective disorders), when confronted with unemployment after discharge from hospital, will usually respond by developing new or worse syndromes. Stressful working conditions appear to have very different effects in schizophrenia and affective disorders, viz. deterioration and amelioration of psychopathological syndromes respectively.