Message disruptions during syntactic processing in schizophrenia.

Twenty-four schizophrenics and 24 nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients were given the Hunt test, which requires the subject to use syntactic strategies to synthesize an extended multisentence text on the basis of a controlled set of input propositions. This syntactic processing task induced many more meaning misrepresentations of input propositions in the schizophrenic group compared to the control group. These group differences could not be accounted for by confounding variables such as level of psychopathology, medication, and verbal skills. An error analysis indicated that schizophrenics were highly likely to produce meaning errors when the rewritten proposition assumed a passive syntactic form. Conceptually complex sequences of propositions also resulted in a high frequency of message errors among schizophrenics; this second factor did not account, however, for the high association of errors and passive rewrites. These data are interpreted as indicating that schizophrenics suffer from a multilevel language-production disturbance that includes higher-level message errors that are reflexively induced by lower-level syntactic processing disturbances.

Treatment of traumatic war neurosis with phenelzine.

Traumatic war neurosis may become a chronic, debilitating condition that resists treatment interventions. Five patients with traumatic war neurosis had favorable therapeutic responses to phenelzine sulfate. These patients did not respond to multiple previous therapeutic trials with antipsychotics, tricyclic antidepressants, and psychotherapy with or without medication. With phenelzine, the patients felt calmer and stopped having nightmares and flashbacks of traumatic war material. Startle reactions and aggressive, violent outbursts also ceased.

The impact of political process on hospital psychiatry.

Political forces motivated the New York State Department of Health to withhold payment for Medicaid-financed inpatients on therapeutic passes. The elimination of therapeutic passes had many negative effects on patient care. The authors believe this experience demonstrates that political factors can overwhelm standard clinical practice and reasoned health planning to force irrational change on health care delivery.

Patient and staff reactions to a strike by essential hospital employees.

The authors sampled the feelings and attitudes of patients and staff toward an 8-day strike by 2,500 health care employees of a metropolitan hospital. The strike had a major impact, and most respondents felt angry at one of the parties of the strike. Sympathies toward the strikers and the hospital management were equally divided.