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Objective: The aim of the present study was to examine whether psychiatric morbidity can influence the type of illness behaviour of neurological inpatients., Methods: For this purpose, we compared neurological inpatients with and without psychiatric disorders (DSM-IIIR criteria) for the seven scales of Illness Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ) and searched for possible differences between the two patient subgroups., Results: Of the 105 neurological inpatients who participated in the study, 54 (51.4%) were diagnosed as having some type of psychiatric disorder. These patients scored significantly higher than patients without psychiatric morbidity in the scale of Irritability. A suggestive trend for higher scores in the scales of Hypochondriasis, Disease Conviction, and Affective Disturbance, and significantly lower score in the scale of Denial, in patients with psychiatric morbidity, were also found., Conclusion: The present study has shown that neurological inpatients with psychiatric morbidity tend to develop more intense illness behaviour than those without. The effect of psychiatric morbidity on certain components of illness behaviour in neurological patients can be taken into account when therapeutic strategies are planned.

To investigate the role of familial factors for suicidal ideation, 48 psychiatric patients belonging to 20 nuclear and three-generation families were personally interviewed. The effect of familiality on suicidal ideation was estimated through the use of mixed model analysis with family as random effect and gender, age and depressive score as fixed effects (covariates). The effect of family was found to be statistically significant (p=0.024) for the whole group of patients and for the subgroup of males (p=0.048), but not female patients; significance persisted for the whole group (p=0.030) and was reduced to indicative level for males (p=0.069), when psychiatric diagnosis was also considered as an additional potentially confounding factor. These results show that the occurrence of suicidal ideation has a familial component, stronger among males than females. This may be an additional explanation (besides those related to various other biological and sociocultural factors) for gender differences in suicidal behavior.

The effects of age and sex on sleep-wakefulness patterns and the relationship between these patterns and psychopathology are described in 150 adults with a primary complaint of insomnia and 100 controls who did not have any complaints of sleep difficulty. Within the insomniac subjects, the degree of difficulty in staying asleep was positively correlated with age. The primary difference between the insomniacs and controls was the insomniacs' greater difficulty in initially falling asleep or returning to sleep once having awakened during the night. Also, in terms of the distribution of wakefulness, insomniacs had significantly greater mean values for wakefulness during each of the first three to four hours of the night. In insomniacs the severity of sleep difficulty and the degree of psychopathology were positively related. Finally, various sleep difficulty and MMPI variables reliably discriminated insomniacs from controls.

DSM-III diagnoses were established for 100 patients with chronic insomnia. Principal and additional diagnoses on axis I and II (psychiatric and personality disorders) were extremely prevalent. Only five patients had a principal diagnosis on axis III (physical disorders). The most common diagnoses on axis I were dysthymic, anxiety, somatoform, and substance use disorders. Compulsive personality disorder or trait was the most common axis II diagnosis. Ninety-five patients had multiple diagnoses. This study confirms that patients with chronic insomnia have a high prevalence of psychopathology and characteristic internalizing patterns of anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsiveness, phobia, and excessive somatic concerns.