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Biomedical subjects

J A Woodward

Publications and source records attributed to J A Woodward.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

Communication deviance in the families of schizophrenics: a comment on the misuse of analysis of covariance.

Serious contradictions in recent research programs concerning communication anomalies in parents of schizophrenics have been generated by invalid statistical analyses. The method of analysis used, the analysis of covariance, can lead to erroneous conclusions in the context of these studies, and thus, other means must be sought for bringing these important research programs into common focus.

Analysis of Variance

The dependence of psychiatric diagnosis on psychological assessment.

This study examined the dependence of 500 inpatient psychiatric diagnoses on the results of standard psychological assessment procedures. A 43% agreement was found between psychological test findings and psychiatric discharge diagnoses. While this level of agreeement is greater than chance, it suggests that psychological test results are not of value in more than one-half of the cases investigated. Specific diagnostic discrepancies between clinical and psychological diagnostic results were noted, and several explanations for these differences were offered.

Alcoholism

Patterns of symptom change in anxious depressed outpatients treated with different drugs.

Patients with mixtures of anxiety and depressive mood of rather modest degree constitute a majority in the psychiatric outpatient population. Drug treatments are employed to produce symptomatic relief. In this study, thirteen commonly used psychotherapeutic drugs were compared for efficacy in producing change in symptoms of anxiety, depressive mood, and psychomotor activation level in this most common type of psychiatric clinic patient. The drugs were found to differ in relative effect on anxiety and depressive mood. Paradoxically, the major and minor tranquilizers produced greater effect on depressive mood than anxiety, while the more sedative of the tricyclic antidepressants produced relatively greater effect on anxiety. Within each of the three major drug classes, the more sedative members of the class tended to have relatively greater effect on anxiety and the less sedative tended to have relatively greater effect on depressive mood components of the symptom picture.

Amitriptyline