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A recursion formula for the proportion of persons having a first admission as schizophrenic
Author(s) -
Deming W. Edwards
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830130605
Subject(s) - mental hygiene , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , recursion (computer science) , census , psychology , state (computer science) , psychiatry , demography , medicine , mental health , population , mathematics , sociology , algorithm
The author presents a theorem in the form of a recursion formula for the proportion of schizophrenics living at any date in terms of the proportion schizophrenic at a previous date (for example, a year earlier). The author's definition of schizophrenic is equated to a first admission into a hospital with diagnosis schizophrenia. Once schizophrenic, a person is then always schizophrenic whether in or out of the hospital. The mathematical basis for the formulas belongs to the theory of probability. The basic data for the author's calculations are The Annual Report of the Department of Mental Hygiene for the State of New York for the year 1960, and the Census of the U. S., 1960: State of New York. The main conclusions follow. 1. For every schizophrenic on the books of the hospitals in file State of New York, 1960, there were three schizophrenics in the State of New York outside the hospital. This proportion (3 to 1) is much higher than the usual conjecture of 1 to 1. 2. The proportion of males living in the State of New York that ever had a first admission as schizophrenic is 1 in 68, and the proportion for females is 1 in 62. 3. The proportion of people of all ages from birth onward that have already had a first admission as schizophrenic or will live long enough to have one is about 1 in 46 for males and about 1 in 39 for females. From age 15 and upward, the proportion for males is 1 in 35; for females, 1 in 30. 4. The formulas allow different death‐rates for people once schizophrenic and for those that have never been so diagnosed. Calculations show, however, that the differences in death‐rates must be small.