A Long‐term Follow‐up Study of Schizophrenia: Psychiatric Course of Illness and Prognosis

Abstract

A systematic psychiatric follow-up study of 502 schizophrenics was carried out using the same well-defined criteria to evaluate the patients throughout the investigation. After an average course of disease of 22.4 years, 22.1% of the patients showed complete psychopathological remission, 43.2% had non-characteristic types of remission and 34.7% suffered from characteristic schizophrenic deficiency syndromes. At the time of the last follow-up investigation, 86.7% of the patients were living at home, while 13.3% were permanently hospitalized. Of the entire sample, 55.9% were found to be "socially recovered". Higher education, psychoreactive provocation, depressive traits, perception of delusions, catatonic agitation, non-characteristic thought disorders and symptoms of depersonalization at the onset of the illness tended to carry with them a favorable prognosis. On the other hand, low intelligence, abnormal primary personality, premorbid disturbances in social behavior, broken homes, prolonged prodromal stages, pneumoence-phalographically measurable atrophic or dysplastic changes in the brain ventricles as well as somatic and auditory hallucinations and predominance of hebephrenic symptoms at the onset of the illness tended to lead to an unfavorable prognosis. The principle of the basic reversibility of typical schizophrenic symptoms and the extensive irreversibility of the non-characteristic defect is important for the psychopathological and social long-term prognosis.

Course Outcome of Delusional Psychoses

“…Bleuler et al. 1976;Gross et al, 1973;Huber et al, 1975;Müller, 1959;Ciompi and Müller, 1976]. The popular in terpretation of this fact is that one third of schizophrenic patients have a good progno sis.…”

The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia: five-year follow-up findings

“…Extensive comparisons of the IPSS data with very long-term follow-up studies (Bleuler, 1972;Huber et al 1975;Tsuang et al 1979;Ciompi, 1980;Harding et al 1987) are not productive because of differences in method and the suggestion from these studies that a progressive improvement occurs in schizophrenia over several decades.…”

Bakımevinde kalan şizofreni hastalarında yaşam kalitesi ve depresyon

“…As in our study, a number of works studying quality of life and related factors in schizophrenia patients found a relation between duration of education and quality of life, whereby with a higher education level the quality of life increased (41)(42)(43)(44)(45). As the education level is one of the variables that may affect cognitive functions, it may improve patients' self-care, allow them to perform a number of functions, and thus have a positive impact on the quality of life.…”