Neurotic Inpatients Research Articles

Relationship Between Personality and Self-stigma in Mixed Neurotic Spectrum and Depressive Disorders – Cross Sectional Study

The goal of the study was to identify psychological features that are significantly connected to the presence of self-stigma. Method 76 neurotic inpatients undergoing a six week hospitalization in the psychotherapeutic department attended the study. The probands completed these psychodiagnostic methods at the start of the treatment – ISMI (Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness Scale), TCI-R (Temperament and Character Inventory, revised version), ADHS (Adult Dispositional Hope Scale), DES (Dissociative Experiences Scale), BAI (Beck Anxiety Scale), BDI-II (Beck Depression Scale, second edition), and CGI (Clinical Global Impression, both the subjective and objective versions). The scores of the scales and the inventory were processed by descriptive statistics, t-tests, correlations, linear regression, and backward stepwise regression. Results The overall level of self-stigma in the patients with a neurosis and possible comorbid depression significantly correlated with several psychological features. Self-stigma was significantly positively connected to the harm avoidance trait, the symptoms of dissociation, anxiety, and depression, and the overall level of psychopathology measured by objCGI and sucjCGI. It also correlated significantly negatively with the persistence and self-directedness traits and hope and its subscales – pathway thinking and agency. After applying backward stepwise regression, only three of the mentioned factors predicted the level of self-stigma – self-directedness, hope, and the subjective evaluation of own mental state. Other factors were suppressed during the analysis. Conclusion Patients with more severe psychopathology show larger tendencies to stigmatize themselves. Low self-directedness and lack of hope are also typical for individuals with higher levels of self-stigma.

Tolerance of ambiguity, art therapy and psychiatric illness

Tolerance of ambiguity means the ability to tolerate contradictory and incalculable informations. There is the hypothesis that a high degree of tolerance of ambiguity correlates with creativity. It is unclear how various psychiatric illnesses and psychopathological conditions affect tolerance of ambiguity. Therefore we carried out a study concerning the tolerance of ambiguity: 154 persons were systematically investigated with a standardized questionnaire (31 schizophrenic in-patients, 41 neurotic in-patients, 49 members of the staff as control group, 33 artists as control group). In addition we examined the degree of depression in the neurotic group, the anancasm score and the well-being in general. In the schizophrenic group we assessed psychotic symptoms, the positive and negative symptoms, medication, anancasm and depression. Tolerance of ambiguity decreased in the following sequence: artists - members of the staff - neurotic in-patients - schizophrenic in-patients. It became evident that in the schizophrenic group negative symptoms negatively correlates with tolerance of ambiguity. The results seem to confirm the hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and creativity. In addition, the higher degree of intolerance of ambiguity in schizophrenic patients may represent a protective mechanism. Intolerance of ambiguity possibly protects from too many contradictory informations. Furthermore the necessity is confirmed that creative therapy methods should be carefully chosen to avoid irritation on the one hand and not to neglect the required training of creative basic functions on the other hand. Although our results weaken the thesis that psychiatric illness is generally associated with an increase of creativity they don't exclude that highly creative performances in some individuals are possible who are especially talented in spite of or even because of their emotional suffering.

Assessing the Egograms of Neurotic Inpatients during Psychotherapy

The use of egograms both as a guide to the conduct of psychotherapy and as a measure of its outcome is assessed. The results of the study described here showed that after therapy the Free Child ego state was significantly strengthened. The results confirmed the initial hypothesis.

Handicraft or interactional groups: a comparative outcome study of neurotic inpatients

A comparative outcome study of 2 contrasting activity-based groups with 80 hospitalized nonpsychotic patients is described. One group focused on activities designed to evoke emotional or interpersonal reactions followed by a subsequent reflection. The other focused on handicrafts and non-emotionally challenging activities. Ego strength was also measured with an instrument developed in conjunction with the study. The 2 groups were demonstrated to be consistent with the preconditions and significantly different by independent scoring of videotaped sessions. There was a greater rated therapeutic gain in the interactional group at discharge, but patient ratings did not differ between groups. There were no differences at follow-up between the groups. Measured ego strength strongly predicted outcome after correcting for the initial symptom levels. Ego strength did not interact with activity type. Clinical diagnosis did not predict differential outcome. The groups had no differential effects on specific symptom clusters or social functioning.

Psychoanalytic concepts of eating disorders: an empirical approach with a semantic differential (Ertel).

To study empirically some psychoanalytic assumptions concerning aspects of the oral character and manifestations of fixation and regression, 61 neurotic inpatients at a psychotherapeutic clinic were investigated using a semantic differential technique (Ertel). Each patient was judged by the differential technique on the basis of 12 object representations which, in respect to the psychoanalytic theory of development, are postulated to have connections with the oral stage. A connotative proximity in the semantic space was postulated for several 'oral connotations'. For these relevant connotations the theoretical assumptions were proved empirically. However, there were no statistical differences between several groups of patients (those with an oral fixation and those with later fixations). Furthermore single dimensions of the semantic differential technique used, in contrast to the three-dimensional analysis, allowed the differentiation of patients with oral fixations from the others simply by using object representations that ought to be relevant for the oral stage of psychosexual development.

EEG spectral analysis in schizophrenia.

Four channels of EEG (T4-T6, P4-02, T3-T5, P3-01) were recorded from several groups of control subjects and schizophrenia patients on analogue tape. They were later digitized and analysed by computer; power spectra were computed for 30 second epochs of EEG per channel; eyes closed, eyes open. No difference between normal controls and neurotic in-patients was apparent. An acute schizophrenic group had less alpha power, this change being confined largely to the temporal areas. A chronic outpatient sample showed less alpha and beta power, while chronic long-stay schizophrenic patients had an excess of delta power. The changes in both chronic patient groups were diffuse rather than local.

The interaction of life events and relatives' expressed emotion in schizophrenia and depressive neurosis.

A history of life events in the three months before onset of illness was taken in a group of schizophrenic and a group of depressed neurotic in-patients. The Expressed Emotion (EE) of the patients' key relatives was measured. There was no difference between the schizophrenic and depressed patients in the rate of events in the three month period before onset or in the proportion of undesirable events. However, the two groups exhibited significantly different patterns of interaction between life events and relatives' EE. Schizophrenic patients living with high EE relatives had a low rate of life events compared with those living with low EE relatives, whereas depressives living with high criticism relatives had a high rate of events compared with those living with low criticism relatives. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to schizophrenic and depressive patients' differential vulnerability to environmental stress.

A and B undergraduate interviews of schizophrenic and neurotic inpatients: A test of the interaction hypothesis.

A and B undergraduate interviews of schizophrenic and neurotic inpatients: A test of the interaction hypothesis.

A and B undergraduate interviewers of schizophrenic and neurotic inpatients: a test of the interaction hypothesis.

A and B undergraduate interviewers of schizophrenic and neurotic inpatients: a test of the interaction hypothesis.

Questionnaire measures and psychiatrists' ratings of a personality dimension. A note on the congruent validity of Caine's self description questionnaire.

Foulds (1961) has drawn what appears to be a useful distinction between personality traits and neurotic and psychotic symptoms and signs. This distinction is helpful both in diagnosis and in the assessment of treatment. Within the framework of this personality-trait and symptom-sign differentiation, Caine and Hawkins (1963) introduced a measure of what they describe as the hysteroid-obsessoid dimension of personality; and reasons in defence of this admittedly rather ugly terminology have been stated recently by Caine and Hope (1964). The self assessment hysteroid-obsessoid questionnaire (HOQ) was developed as a refinement of the hysteroid-obsessoid rating scale previously devised by Foulds and Caine (1958), which they had not found to be adequate in differentiating between groups of obsessoid and groups of hysteroid persons. The questions in the HOQ are framed in simple language and require only a true-false response. Caine and Hawkins have reported the results they obtained from administering this questionnaire to neurotic in-patients, some of whom also completed the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI), albeit at different stages of treatment. Although the MPI has been used extensively with samples drawn from non-psychiatric populations, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, Caine's questionnaire, a relatively new instrument, has not been as widely tested.

A clinical comparison study of the effects of reserpine and placebo on anxiety.

Within recent years considerable attention has been directed toward the therapeutic effects of reserpine (alkaloid of Rauwolfia serpentina) on a large variety of emotional disorders, and many favorable reports have appeared in both medical and lay publications. Noce et al., 1,2 Barsa and Kline, 3 Kline and Stanley, 4 and Hollister et al. 5 were among the first to report on its effects on mentally ill patients. These studies were limited to hospitalized patients who manifested psychotic disorders of varying duration, type, and degree. More recently, Hare, Seager, and Leitch 6 reported a study of the effects of reserpine as compared with those of amobarbital and of an inert control substance on 42 neurotic inpatients. These authors concluded that amobarbital produced much improvement in a great majority of their patients, whereas the results with reserpine were no better than those with the placebo. They suggested the need for caution in