Epidemiology of schizophrenia and affective psychoses

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Abstract
The measurement and comparison of incidence rates for schizophrenia and affective psychoses are hampered by uncertainties in diagnosis and classification; but history suggests that this difficulty should not be a deterrent. For epidemiological study, affective psychosis is probably better represented by bipolar disorder than by manic-depressive psychosis. Comparison of the findings in schizophrenia and affective psychosis shows the two groups to be similar in sex ratio, age-incidence, risk of suicide, and seasonal variations in onset and birth: and to be different in personality type, premorbid impairment, and age of onset by sex. Differences in prognosis and fertility are less marked now than formerly. Psychological hypotheses of causation receive little support, but the seasonality phenomena point to environmental factors of a biological kind as causal in these psychoses.

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