A Follow-Up Study on some Schizophrenic Patients

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Abstract
What happens to schizophrenics after their discharge to the community has been a subject of several recent studies. Most of this work is from the Social Psychiatry Research Unit at the Maudsley Hospital and deals with prospects of rehabilitation and resettlement, morbidity in the community, and the impact which these patients have on their families. Earlier follow-up studies of chronic patients who left certain London hospitals between 1949 and 1956 point to a satisfactory resettlement in two-thirds of cases (Brown et al., 1958). In more recent papers rather cautious conclusions were drawn, especially where morbidity in the community and not just lengths of hospital stay and re-admission rates were ascertained (Wing, 1963; Wing et al., 1964). Whilst the time spent in hospital by schizophrenics is now much shorter, re-admission rates continue to rise, and according to Wing “… in the absence of effective community services the policy of early discharges is based to a large degree on the willingness of relatives to attempt the role of nurse and put up with considerable discomfort and distress”. Furthermore, with existing services so different in various parts of the country, no reliable data exist which would indicate to what extent a fully developed community service could prevent morbidity of discharged schizophrenics. What is needed, according to Wing, would be a combination of the Nottingham community services, the Worthing day-centre and industrial workshops on the Bristol pattern.