The attitudes of psychiatric doctors and nurses toward the mentally ill in a large urban psychiatric hospital in China were compared using the Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill (CAMI). Data indicated that the attitude of professionals differed on 11 of the 40 questions of this instrument. Those questions are divided along 4 dimensions: authoritarianism, benevolence, social restrictiveness and rehabilitation in the community. Results showed that psychiatric doctors have a more liberal and positive attitude toward the mentally ill than psychiatric nurses, especially about their rehabilitation in the community. Factor analysis also indicated that nurses were more likely than doctors to attribute negative characteristics to the mentally ill. Some explanations are proposed to explain these differences.

This study aimed to assess the boundaries of the schizophrenia spectrum and whether inclusion of such phenotypes increases power for linkage analysis of schizophrenia. Participants were 234 first degree relatives (FDRs) of 94 schizophrenia probands in Northern Taiwan who completed a direct interview using the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies (DIGS). Based on best estimate diagnosis, the morbidity risk in the relatives for schizophrenia was 2.5 percent (Weinberg's shorter method) or 3.9 percent (Kaplan-Meier estimate). Depending on the stringency of diagnosis, lifetime prevalence was 2.6 percent to 4.7 percent for schizotypal personality disorder, 3.4 percent to 8.6 percent for paranoid personality disorder, and 1.3 percent to 3.4 percent for schizoid personality disorder. These figures are significantly higher than the corresponding figures in the general population. However, none of the recurrence risk ratio for any spectrum that included both schizophrenia and a personality disorder (3.0 to 5.9) was greater than that of schizophrenia alone (9.3 to 14.4). Thus, including schizophrenia-related personality disorders in the spectrum did not increase power for linkage analysis of schizophrenia.