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This paper evaluates and describes methods for making psychiatric distinctions. It is by means of psychiatric distinctions that individuals are labeled mentally ill or mentally well. Within the mentally ill category, patients are differentially placed according to the severity and type of their mental illness. The placement of individuals into psychiatric categories is an essential prerequisite not only to the clinical treatment of patients but also to any research where the objective is to determine empirical regularities associated with mental illness. Until the patient is categorized, the practitioner has no logical guide for how to perform treatment or even whether he should treat the patient—i.e, the patient may not be a patient. Similarly, unless the psychiatric researcher has categorized his subjects according to some notion of mental illness he has no way of making comparisons or of assessing change, the two essential processes in research. Thus, the logical first step for arty discovery of new knowledge in the field of mental illness is to appraise the reliability and validity of methods for making psychiatric distinctions. No research findings can be more reliable or valid than the psychiatric distinctions used in carrying oat the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sample survey using personal interviews was conducted in the Reno, Nevada, area to assess public conceptions of suicide and suicidal actions, attitudes toward the notion of suicide, attitudes toward people personally known to have committed or attempted suicide, and various degrees of familiarity with suicidal behaviors. Suicidal behavior by others was personally familiar to 74 percent of the respondents, and the general conceptions of suicide included shame and social disgrace, but not blame, to the family. Suicide generally was seen as something that happens to a person, rather than something he intentionally brings about. Public health implications of the data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a study of 1,045 state mental hospital patients released on leave of absence during the calendar year of 1956 to the Oakland California Bureau of Social Work, a large amount of evaluative information was collected on post-hospital adjustment. Data from case records, administrative files, and hospital records were reviewed. They clearly demonstrated that most ex-patients did not possess a sufficient number of social resources to allow them to adapt to the world outside the state hospital. On the basis of these findings, one can easily understand why seven out of ten of these patients returned to the hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores socio-cultural and social-psychological factors associated with the voluntary utilization of a psychiatric outpatient clinic among students on a large university campus. Students who sought psychiatric care as compared to those who did not were (1) more likely to come from groups who were less integrated into traditional social institutions in terms of role expectations, (2) more likely to belong to or identify with other students who were more cosmopolitan in value-orientation and less integrated into the general collegiate milieu, and (3) more likely to have friends with social-emotional problems and were more likely to discuss such problems with greater frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]