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Why has the incidence of schizophrenia in Danish psychiatric institutions decreased since 1970?
Author(s) -
MunkJørgensen P.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
acta psychiatrica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.849
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1600-0447
pISSN - 0001-690X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0447.1987.tb02752.x
Subject(s) - danish , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , incidence (geometry) , psychiatry , medicine , medical diagnosis , hospital admission , psychiatric hospital , paranoid schizophrenia , psychiatric diagnosis , pediatrics , diagnosis of schizophrenia , psychosis , philosophy , linguistics , physics , pathology , optics
— From The Danish Psychiatric Register five cohorts of all first‐admitted patients to Danish psychiatric institutions from the years 1970, 1973, 1976, 1979, and 1980 have been followed, and trends in age‐standardized rates of schizophrenia investigated. The first‐admission rates have decreased in both sexes, significantly in males. In addition, the cumulated schizophrenia rates for the cohorts, including those of patients diagnosed as schizophrenics only at a later admission within periods of 2 and 5 years, decreased. This decrease is significant at 2 years of observation in both sexes and at 5 years in females. The decreasing first‐admission rates might be explained partly by changes in diagnostic habits. The differential diagnoses of schizophrenia (paranoid states (ICD‐8:297), paranoid reactive psychoses (298.3), unspecified psychoses (298.9 and 299), and borderline states (ICD‐8 Danish version: 301.83)) are increasingly used as first‐admission diagnoses for patients later to be diagnosed as schizophrenics, possibly owing to a tendency to avoid the diagnosis of schizophrenia, when treatment of a patient is possible. A method of calculating the hospital incidence of schizophrenia approaching the real incidence better than the incidence of first‐admission diagnoses is suggested.