Precursors of premature disease and death: habits of nervous tension.

Patterns of habits of nervous tension (HNT) recorded by medical students who later developed cancer, coronary occlusion, hypertension, or mental illness, or who committed suicide, were compared with those of students who remained healthy 15 to 30 years later. Data came from the 25-item HNT Questionnaire previously reported. Unpaired t tests and two-group discriminant function analyses were the chief statistical methods used. Compared with those of the healthy group, the overall HNT patterns were significantly different for the cancer, coronary occlusion, mental illness and suicide groups. The overall pattern for the hypertension group did not reach significance. It therefore appears that youthful reactions to stress as self-reported in a checklist of habits of nervous tension reflect individual psychobiological differences that are linked with future health or disease.

The treatment of perceptual disturbances in schizophrenia with naloxone hydrochloride.

The authors treated 12 schizophrenic patients who had overt hallucinatory symptoms with intravenously administered naloxone hydrochloride, a narcotic antagonist purported to have antihallucinatory properties. They found no evidence of the effectiveness of naloxone in preventing hallucinations over that of placebo when administered in a randomized, double-blind fashion.

A controlled comparison of cyclazocine and naloxone treatment of the paroled narcotic addict.

A controlled, double-blind study of the comparative effectiveness of the narcotic antagonists, cyclazocine and naloxone, was undertaken in a metropolitan narcotic clinic offering an abstinence program involving urine monitoring and ancillary counseling services. Seventy male addict parolees were randomly assigned to 6-month treatment with either cyclazocine, 4 mg administered on a daily basis, or naloxone, 500-2,000 mg administered on a locally developed and researched 'contingent' basis, i.e., whenever there was indication of narcotic drug use (daily and contingent placebos were utilized to preserve the double-blind). Criteria of treatment effectiveness included narcotic drug usage, clinic attendance, length of participation in the program, disposition at 6 months, and incidence of side effects. The two subsamples of 35 individuals were similar with respect to relevant demographic characteristics. Examination of comparative effects revealed little to no significant differences between the two groups in terms of measures of program adherence, treatment outcome, and personal and social adjustment. Side effects were more prevalent among cyclazocine patients. Typically, these included moderately severe somatic effects and perceptual and cognitive disturbances.

The psychopathology and measurement of environmental stress.

Recent research on environmental stress is reviewed with emphasis on human subjects and on psychopathology. Theoretical and methodological issues are considered with reference to the need for increased attention to stress in clinical research. A new brief interview procedure for measuring recent and current environmental stress is described. It has been used with recently released mental hospital patients and qualified informants in a longitudinal follow-up study. Despite the provisional status of the stress inquiry, it yielded promising early results in discriminating between patients who were later rehospitalized and those who continued living in the community.