Differentiating Exogenous Psychiatric Illness From Schizophrenia

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Abstract
• Retaining an individual on psychiatric dispensary lists long after a single psychotic episode can result in unnecessary restriction of his or her social-vocational rights and responsibilities. This study demonstrates that an early clinical differentiation can be made between exogenous psychoses and progressive schizophrenia. The validity of the clinical differentiation was enhanced by demonstrating that a computer learning and pattern-recognition program was capable of using signs and symptoms recorded in the first psychotic episode to make a differential diagnosis that coincided closely with diagnoses made at a later date by clinicians aware of the subsequent clinical course. This kind of approach to standardized nosologic principles may expand the possibility for more appropriate application of psychotropic medications, psychotherapy, and somatic treatments, as well as more accurate social-vocational prognoses.

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