One hundred and eleven patients admitted to an acute medical geriatric assessment unit were screened for depression using the Geriatric Depression Scale questionnaire. All patients with high scores were further assessed by a consultant psychiatrist in a semistructured interview. Of the patients screened, 23.4% had depression of a clinically significant degree and 13.5% were judged to need specific antidepressant medication. 10.8% of the population had depressive illness superimposed on organic brain disease.
The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and two versions of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ 28 and corrected GHQ 28) were administered to 111 patients admitted to an acute geriatric medical unit. Depression and dementia were diagnosed by semi-structured interview using DSM III criteria. There was no statistically significant difference in the three scales between cognitively normal depressed patients and demented depressed patients. The three scales were sensitive indicators of depressive illness (greater than 90%), but the GHQ 28 and CGHQ 28 needed adjustment of their community-based threshold values.
A 50-item questionnaire, designed to link attitudes to psychiatry directly with how these might influence a career choice of psychiatry, was administered to medical students before and after their clinical clerkship in psychiatry. Many of these changed in a positive direction, e.g. 'job satisfaction', 'life-style', 'training available' and 'multidisciplinary approach'. The influence of important people in their lives was predominantly negative; this may emphasize the impact of psychiatric 'role models'. Male and female students differed in how they changed. Males appeared influenced by external factors, e.g. 'work hours' and 'career structure', and females by internal ones, e.g. 'interest in knowing more about self'. Females were also more likely to wish for a career in psychiatry. Psychiatry was ranked higher in career choice at the end of the clerkship.
Serum and red cell folate concentrations were estimated in 68 affective disorder patients taking lithium prophylactically, 65 of whom had bipolar disorder. The number of hospital admissions, the frequency of use of additional mood altering treatments and the Affective Morbidity Index were calculated for the 2 years of the study. Contrary to other findings, there were no differences between the folate concentrations for different severities of affective morbidity. These results question the rationale of prescribing folic acid preparations for lithium-treated bipolar disorder patients, but the authors indicate that folate concentrations may be low in lithium-treated unipolar depressives.
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