CT scans were performed on 72 consecutive patients with a functional psychosis, and compared with 50 community controls. There was a specific difference in lateral ventricular area between these two groups but it accounted for only 11% of the variance in this measure. In contrast, racial and sexual differences in the ventricular-brain ratio (VBR) related to differences in intracranial area. It is argued that analysis of variance, using lateral ventricular area and intra-cranial area, is more informative than VBR in examining these structural changes in functional psychoses.