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The goals of this study were to describe demographic variables, drinking history, and the 6-month prevalence of Axis I comorbidity among alcohol-dependent subjects in GERMANY: The variables: amount of alcohol consumption, age at onset of the first alcohol consumed, age at onset of daily alcohol consumption, age at onset of withdrawal symptoms and number of detoxifications were related to the different comorbid disorders and gender. In this study, 556 patients from 25 alcohol treatment centres were enrolled between 1 January 1999 and 30 April 1999. After a minimum of 10 days of sobriety patients who fulfilled ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria of alcohol dependence were interviewed for data collection using the Mini-DIPS (German version of the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule) and a standardized psychosocial interview. The 6-month prevalence of comorbid Axis I disorders was 53.1%. Among the patients with comorbidity, affective and anxiety disorders were most frequent. Comorbid stress disorder was associated with an early start of drinking, an early beginning of withdrawal symptoms, highest number of detoxifications, and the highest amount of alcohol consumed. Female patients with anxiety disorder consumed more alcohol and started earlier than females without this comorbid disorder. The data do not answer the question of the pathogenesis of comorbid disorders and alcoholism, but indicate that stress disorders in alcoholic patients and anxiety disorders in female alcoholics influence the course and severity of alcoholism.

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Patients with various neuropsychiatric disorders who confused virtual images with real objects have recently been described. When asked to take objects from an investigator's hand while looking in a mirror, these patients reached directly into the mirror for the object's image. To investigate whether the phenomenon occurs in patients with Alzheimer's disease, we studied 127 cases, of whom 67 were suspected of having Alzheimer-type dementia (DAT). The phenomenon in question was not observed in either of two control groups, but whereas 38 (57%) of the DAT patients responded correctly, 17 (25%) of them grasped at the mirror image. Characteristically, none of the eight patients who grasped into the mirror and underwent single photon emission computed tomography analysis showed symmetric activity. We also analyzed the behaviour and verbal utterances of the DAT patients in front of the mirror.

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BACKGROUND: We investigated whether older patients are disadvantaged compared to younger patients on admission to a psychiatric clinic. METHOD: Using odds ratio and Mantel-Haenszel statistics, the null hypothesis is tested of whether patients over sixty-five years old who do not live in the sector of the catchment area of a psychiatric clinic have the same changes of admission as patients over sixty-five who live in this sector. RESULTS: Older sector patients and younger non-sector patients are preferentially admitted compared to older non-sector patients. The odds ratio of the particular groups deviated highly significantly from 3.83, thus refuting the null hypothesis. CONCLUSION: Younger patients are preferentially admitted by the clinical psychiatrist.

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Artificial neuronal networks increasingly serve the interpretation of neuro-biological problems. Typically, neuronal networks store "associations". By a "store-matrix", which works like holography because it sums up many memories, a new impression is assigned to the most similar memory satisfying the criterion of minimal Hamming distance. Schizophrenia-like reactions arise in the case the neuronal network is overloaded with too many memories. Aside from the fascinating power of the model it needs to be criticized and possibly improved. "Ball" is both a spherical object and a dance. Although the semantical levels are at a great distance from each other, the Hamming distance of the binary coded chains of symbols "ball"-"ball" is zero. The investigation of schizophrenic disturbances shows that a few of them-inversing the model-assumptions-prefer associations by using the criterion of minimal Hamming distance.

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The brain produces an image of the world outside on its own inner world and should by rights record temporal relationships whose sequence reproduces the sequence of events observed. As, however, visual, auditory and somatic sensory impulses reach the brain after latent periods of differing duration, marked phase differences occur. One way of producing linear phase characteristics with latent periods of 100-500 ms is by means of phase shift and time reversal, referred to in more detail later. With this model it can be shown that Libet's hypothesis of "antedating" (Libet et al., 1979) is consistent in itself, that is, that it contains no inner contradictions (Honderich, 1984). Although there is no sure proof that these mechanisms actually exist, there is in fact no other way of achieving linear phase than by phase shift and time reversal. It must therefore to be assumed that they are present in the brain.

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The weekly distribution of deaths for myocardial infarction was studied, using mortality data for Lower Saxony for the years 1968-77. In accordance with hypotheses derived from Holmes & Rahe's stress model, an increase of deaths was found on Saturdays and Mondays only in men aged between 25 and 55 years.

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First a review of recent studies of the monthly and weekly distribution of suicide is given. Then the results of an analysis of the mortality figures for Lower Saxony from 1968 to 1977 are presented in which age, sex and means of suicide are taken into consideration. The monthly distribution of all suicides (ICD8 E950-E958) shows a maximum incidence in spring and early summer and a minimum in winter, the weekly distribution a maximum on Monday and minimum at the weekend. In contrast to suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation (ICD8 E953) which follow the same pattern, the figures for suicide by poisoning with solid and fluid substances (ICD8 E950) show practically no heterogeneity in both, monthly and weekly distributions. The results are interpreted using Durkheim's concept of 'anomia', drawing an analogy between the days of the week and the months of the year.

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A method for detection and estimation of periodic signals in the presence of noise is described. The algorithm is an iterative improvement of the autoregressive-moving average estimation of a stochastic process and gives an exact frequency resolution of sinusoidal signals additively mixed with noise in a low signal-to-noise ratio only from a small number of measurements. The iterative improvement of the spectral estimation compared with other methods is demonstrated by examples.

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The admission data of the psychiatric unit of the Hannover Medical School for the period 1973 to 1981 were studied by time-series analysis (Box and Jenkins 1970). The total number of admissions as well as subgroups formed according to diagnosis, sex and age did not show any seasonal variations.

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