Relationship between mood and digit-symbol performance in hospitalized patients with functional psychiatric disorders

SYSNOPSIS This paper reports the relationship between mood, as measured by the Visual Analogue Mood Scale, and digit-symbol performance within individual hospitalized patients in a consecutive series of admissions with functional psychiatric disorders. It confirms the earlier finding of Folstein and Luria that a significant mood-digit-symbol relationship distinguishes clear cases of affective psychoses from clear non-affective disorders. Furthermore, it shows that, among patients who do not present with classical affective syndromes, those who manifest a significant mood-digit-symbol relationship tend to receive specific treatments for mood disturbances, have a positive family history of depression or mania, and improve significantly at discharge.