PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

D H Myers

Publications and source records attributed to D H Myers.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1978

The seasonal incidence of mania and its relationship to climatic variables.

Monthly hospital admission rates (HA) for mania were classified by sex, type of admission (first, or re-admission) and by country (England and Wales or Scotland). Of the 8 classes thus created, all but one showed a statistically significant annual cycle with a peak in Summer and trough in Winter. There was no significant difference in phase or amplitude between male and female cycles. A linear increase in yearly re-admission rates was found during the 8 years of the English and the 11 years of the Scottish data. Current month's mean daily temperature (lag0) and last month's (lag1) mean day-length and mean daily hours of sunshine correlated better with admission rate than did the values for other months. In a multiple regression analysis temperature made the other 2 climatic variables redundant in accounting for variation in HA.

Bipolar Disorder↗
PubMed1978

Suicide in psychiatric patients.

The study relates to suicides occurring in Shropshire during 1965 to 1973 inclusive. Psychiatric patients who had committed suicide were compared with others, matched by sex and age who had not done so. The suicide group included a higher proportion of members who had behaved violently, experienced a broken marriage (through death, separation or divorce) or earlier had deliberately harmed themselves, often by dangerous means. Of the psychiatric patients who committed suicide 63 per cent had seen a doctor within a month beforehand, yet very few were receiving adequate physical treatment for depressive illness at the time of their death. Immigrants from eastern Europe were found to be particularly prone to suicide.

Divorce↗
PubMed1976

Right- and left-handed counting of braille dots in subjects unaccustomed to braille.

Previous work has shown that children acquainted with Braille can usually read better with their left than with their right hand. It is also known that, at least in right-handed people, the right cerebral hemisphere is dominant for counting dots. The present paper compares, in right-handed subjects unacquainted with Braille, the comparative skill of right and left middle (M) and index (I) fingers in counting Braille dots. In one experiment with 30 subjects no significant difference was found between LI and RI fingers. Another experiment failed to reveal any R/L differences although it detected a superiority of I over M fingers at P less than 0-025. When the task was split between the two I fingers working simultaneously they performed significantly (P less than 0-001) better than when working alone. This latter finding is thought to have a bearing on the failure to detect R/L differences; other possible explanations of the findings are also discussed.

Adult↗