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First‐admission rates and marital status of schizophrenics
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.tb02886.x
Subject(s) - danish , incidence (geometry) , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , marital status , medicine , hospital admission , pediatrics , psychiatry , demography , population , philosophy , linguistics , physics , environmental health , sociology , optics
All patients who were first‐admitted to Danish psychiatric institutions in the calendar years 1970, 1973, 1976, 1979, and 1982 and who were diagnosed as schizophrenics at least once within a 2‐year period of observation from the first day of the first admission are followed up by means of the nation‐wide Danish Psychiatric Register (totally 1,175 males and 665 females). Sex and age specific first‐admission rates of schizophrenia show that the difference between male and female rates especially appears in the age group 15–24 years. In this age group the peak incidence is found for both sexes, also if the patients only diagnosed as schizophrenics at a later admission are included. The ratio of male to female incidence rates are not changed by inclusion of the latter patients. A higher frequence of married or formerly married patients is found among the schizophrenics who were diagnosed late in the course of treatment than among those who were so at first‐admission. This might be a manifestation of a less severe symptomatology which could explain the tendency to hesitate in diagnosing patients as schizophrenics.