Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A E Blewett.
We report a patient with liver disease and esophageal varices who responded to intensive psychiatric intervention on a medical unit. Her case illustrates the successful use of electroconvulsive therapy in the presence of varices, and highlights some precautions that could be taken in treating similar patients.
A series of 48 new patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were asked to complete an Eating Attitudes Test. The same test was given to a series of 32 patients attending an Eating Disorder clinic, a series of 31 patients attending a gastroenterology outpatient clinic with a diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and to a group of 28 'normal' controls. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the IBD group and control groups for EAT score. The EAT score for the group with eating disorders was significantly higher than for all other groups. The EAT score for the IBS group was greater than those for the IBD and control group (p = 0.05) when all four groups were compared using analysis of variance and the Least Significant Difference test.
A series of 70 consecutive patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were interviewed concerning their family history of psychiatric disorders. A series of 60 consecutive patients with major depression (MDE) were also interviewed, as were a control group of 46 relatives of patients with organic brain disease. The results showed that both IBS and MDE groups had a similar, higher prevalence of relatives with psychiatric illness than controls, and that this was due to a higher prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorder in the relatives. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Abnormality of subjective time experience is well recognised in psychiatric illness. Earlier authors suggested that slowed time experience in depression is an aspect of psychomotor retardation, while more recently it has been argued that this disturbance is non-specifically linked to the global severity of the depressive syndrome. This study offers evidence that both views can be justified: slowed time awareness is a common symptom of depression, related particularly to retardation, and to the severity of the mood disturbance. Some of the experimental difficulties in this kind of research are illustrated.