A Delusional Scale
G. A. FOULDS M.A., Ph.D.1 and
K. HOPE M.A., Ph.D.2
1 Medical Research Council Unit for Research on the Epidemiology of Psychiatric Illness, Edinburgh University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, Edinburgh 10.
2 Research Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford
An a priori delusional scale differentiated between psychotics and neurotics as efficiently as a psychotic v. neurotic scale empirically derived for this purpose. Some support is lent to the notion that the presence of delusions is the necessary and sufficient condition for the diagnosis of psychosis. This would at least tend to obviate much of the neurotic/reactive—psychotic/endogenous confusion in depression which, it has been claimed (Kreitman et al., 1961), accounts for much of the unreliability of psychiatric diagnosis.
Submitted on October 13, 1967
