Malignant Anxiety

New medico-social problems in Africa have given rise to various abnormal reactions of individuals in relation to a changing society. Twenty-nine patients with such reactions have been studied and four described in detail. The majority of them were found not to be certifiably insane or mentally deficient though they were mentally abnormal or disturbed. In most of these patients criminal behaviour of an aggressive type was preceded by, or associated with, manifest anxiety of a severe degree. The clinical and socio-cultural aspects of this condition have been examined, and their relationship to other mental disorders has been discussed. Malignant anxiety has been found to be due to a general failure of personality integration. It developed under the impact of social and emotional difficulties encountered by personalities psychologically ill-equipped to meet them. It is essential that the inter-relationship between different hypothesized aetiological factors in this and similar conditions be investigated by a team of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and psychiatrists as has already been advocated (Lambo, 1959).