New Mental Illness Test

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 15

New Mental Illness Test

(N Z Press Assn —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, July 2. Government research scientists are trying to develop a bio-chemical test that would provide a warning of suicidal intent in a person sutiering from depression, a widespread form of mental illness, says the Associated Press. The objective is to evolve a test of urine, blood or possibly some other body fluid. This news was given by the Public Health Service in disclosing new evidence of an apparent link between certain

aspects of a patient’s body chemistry and his symptoms of depression. Even without a specific test for suicidal intent, the new findings might provide doctors with a set of physical and emotional warning signals that would help them prevent a “depressive crisis" and possible suicide in a patient, the report said. Next to schizophrenia, or “split-personality,” depression accounts for the largest num her of mentally ill persons in the United States. Many Victims Its victims make up the majority of the 25,000 Americans who commit suicide each year. Suicide is the fourth-rank-ing cause of death among Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.

In a three-year study of patients whose depressions

ranged from mild to psychotic (completely deranged), patients usually had normal thinking, in spite of feelings of depression, but periodically sank into agonising spells of derangement. These episodes built up over an average of 13 days and came to a head on whal the report termed “the crisis onset day.” On the alert for these crises, the scientists kept a record of the patients’ daily behaviour. Urine was collected and analysed for its content of waste-products from certain hormones of the adrenal glands believed connected with depression and anxiety The levels of the hormones rose slightly as the patients grew more depressed, and, on the “crisis day.” the levels shot up out of normal range During these depressive episodes, the patients’ symptoms included despair and intense terror of death.