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Background: Doctors are poor at help-seeking, particularly for mental ill health; attitudes of colleagues reflecting stigmatisation may be important factors influencing decisions to seek support. Aims: This article focuses on doctors’ attitudes to depression rather than mental illness in general. It seeks to determine the extent to which doctors perceive depression is stigmatised within the medical profession and whether the level of perceived stigma affects patterns of help-seeking behaviour. Method: A postal survey was sent to 1488 General Practitioners and 152 psychiatrists in Devon and Cornwall. Questions assessed stigmatising attitudes to depression; help-seeking behaviour and barriers to help-seeking. Prevalence of self-reported depression and time off work was measured. Results: The response rate was 76.6%. Doctors perceived that many of their profession hold stigmatising views of depression. Some 46.2% of respondents reported that they had suffered an episode of depression. Help-seeking was significantly reduced in those with a history of depression. Barriers to help-seeking were reported as letting colleagues down (73.1%), confidentiality (53.4%), letting patients down (51.9%) and career progression (15.7%). Gender and a history of depression significantly affected help-seeking behaviour and perceived stigmatisation. Higher levels of perceived stigma increased concerns about help-seeking and reduced help-seeking from own GP or colleagues. Conclusion: Stigma associated with depression in doctors is endemic in the medical profession and the level of perceived stigma is related to reduced help-seeking behaviour. Efforts need to be made by the profession to reduce the stigma anticipated by those who become depressed, to enable appropriate help-seeking and support.

Background/Aims: Alzheimer disease (AD) patients commonly suffer from behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). A genetic component to BPSD development in AD has been demonstrated. This is an investigation of whether the linked polymorphic region and variable number tandem repeat variants of the serotonin transporter (SERT) are associated with BPSD. Methods: The longitudinal measures of BPSD of our large cohort of 367 AD patients were assessed by the Neuropsychiatric Inventory. Measures with good evidence of serotonergic involvement (delusions, hallucinations, depression, anxiety, agitation/aggression and irritability) were related to genotype and allele frequencies of the linked polymorphic region and variable number tandem repeat variants. Results: Analysis revealed significant relationships between the linked polymorphic region variant long allele with irritability and the variable number tandem repeat 10-repeat allele with psychosis, but no associations were found with depression, anxiety or agitation/aggression. Conclusion: Our data and review of previous studies suggest SERT could play a minor role in development of psychosis and aggressive/irritable tendencies; however, further investigations are required in large, well-characterized cohorts.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine empirically the final justification of the HORG classification: that it works. This is, essentially, a methodological exercise assessing the usefulness of HORG in discriminating between valued outcomes for women. Because this is an empirical issue, we have to make this assessment in comparison to some other possible index and we have suggested using the woman’s own height as one which fulfils several of the technical criteria for a reliable and useful index (and certainly more so than HORG).

Summary. The standardization of birthweight for gestational age, taking into accounhd sex of infant and maternal height and weight, is clinically useful and essential for some research purposes. In Britain, the most commonly used standards for singletons are those derived from Thomson et al. (1968) from a series of births to women in Aberdeen between 1948 and 1964. The present study starts with the observation that the present population of births in Aberdeen is different. This prompted work to ‘update’ the standards at least for research purposes, and in so doing a number of problems have been encountered which complicate the task of developing universally applicable standards.

A retrospective sample of 164 pregnancies in the years 1956 to 1975 of 78 insulin-dependent diabetic women was examined to assess the extent of the risk of clinically recognizable spontaneous abortion relative to the expected risk in a comparable population. This study was done before the implementation of the policy to establish good control of maternal diabetes before conception was attempted. After control of data for pregnancy number, maternal age, and epoch, the risk of spontaneous abortion among the diabetic women was almost double the estimate of the expected risk (p less than 0.001).