The physique of female psychiatric patients.

Anthropomorphic, psychiatric and other biological data on a consecutive series of female patients admitted to a mental hospital are reported. Using Parnell's method of physical anthropometry and somatotyping, analyses of the data obtained fail to confirm Parnell's finding, in a comparable series, of statistically significant relationships between somatotype and psychiatric diagnosis, duration of stay in hospital, civil state, family size and sex ratio of children. Possible reasons for this are given and the reliability of Parnell's method of somatotyping is briefly discussed.