Influence of Season on Manifestation of Schizophrenic Subtypes

Abstract

In the modern classification systems ICD-10 and DSM-III-R, the term seasonality has been given a separate significance in the diagnostic categorization of affective disorders. Its definition is oriented not merely to the increased seasonal prevalence in the autumn and winter months, but also to symptoms that do not occur in nonseasonal attacks. To date, research work on seasonality in schizophrenia has concentrated on birth seasonality, while no results based on large populations of patients have yet become available on the manifestation seasonality of schizophrenic subtypes. Within the framework of a retrospective study carried out in the period between 1983 and 1995, involving 2,119 patients suffering from recurrent attacks of schizophrenia, seasonal manifestations were recorded in accordance with the criteria defined in DSM-III-R. It was found that the two subtypes of paranoid hallucinatory and schizoaffective psychoses met the criterion of seasonality significantly more frequently than did the subtypes disorganized and catatonic disorders. In addition, seasonal courses within the groups just mentioned clearly differed from the nonseasonal forms in terms of their symptomatology.

Effects of climate on admission rates of schizophrenia patients to psychiatric hospitals

“…The major finding of this study is that admission rates of schizophrenia patients to psychiatric hospitals in Israel due to acute psychotic exacerbations of the disorder correlate significantly with maximum environmental temperature (r = 0.35, n = 132 months, P < 0.001). Furthermore, and as might be expected [1,6,14,15,21], an excess of admissions were evident for schizophrenia patients during the Israeli hottest seasons (spring and summer) versus a relative trough during the winter. This study corroborates findings from few other studies that suggest the contribution of a specific climatic factor (i.e.…”

“…peak admis-sions in the fall vs. spring) compared to schizophrenia patients'admittance pattern. In contrast to schizophrenia, there is no well-established data regarding seasonal variation in admittance of schizoaffective patients to psychiatric facilities [11,21,23]. Hence, the dissimilarities found in our study between seasonal admittance pattern of schizophrenia-vs. schizoaffective patients further strengthens the assumption about the possible contributing role of maximum environmental temperature in specifically modulating schizophrenic psychosis, but not other psychoses.…”

The Role of Environmental Influences on Schizophrenia Admissions in Israel

“…Initially described with respect to affective disorders, there is growing evidence that this association is also true for schizophrenia. A number of studies of schizophrenia patients found an increase in hospital admissions during the summer and a decrease during December (Abe, 1963;Hare & Walter, 1978;Takei et al, 1992;Sperling et al, 1997;Clarke et al, 1998Clarke et al, , 1999Suhail & Cochrane, 1998;Strous et al, 2001;Shiloh et al, 2005). The mechanism responsible for these fluctuations is incompletely understood.…”

“…Associations with factors such as religious festivals, public holidays and vacations have been suggested but their impact remains unclear (Abe, 1963;Hare & Walter, 1978;Suhail & Cochrane, 1998). A brief literature review reveals a trend favouring meteorological and biological explanations over social ones, with some studies a priori excluding subjects in whom there is a clear effect of social factors (Sperling et al, 1997).…”

Lunar and Seasonal Rhythms and Childhood Mortality

“…On the other hand, seasonality studies have demonstrated an effect on psychiatric (Boyd et al, 1986;Castrogiovanni et al, 1998) and gastric complaints such as affective disorders, schizophrenia, depression (extensive revision in Fuller et al, 1997) diarrhea, or infectious diseases, eating disorders, mood variations, hypersomnia, alcoholism Alzheimer's disease (Spearling et al, 1997;Calil et al, 2000). However, in this context, no variation exists with regard to birth-date of schizophrenics and seasonality in Mexico (Muñoz-Delgado et al, unpublished).…”