Criteria for Subtyping Schizophrenia

Age-of-Onset in Schizophrenia and Schizotypal Disorders

“…The cur rent data suggest that onset after age 40 is not likely, con sistent with the early European literature [1], but in con trast to some other studies [2][3][4][5][6][7], The mean and median age-of-onset in our sample are smaller than those re ported in most other recent series (table III). The absence of sex effect on age-of-onset in this sample is consistent with some [3,5] on a relationship between age-of-onset and schizophrenia subtypes [5,7,11], Data on age at first hospitalization are not considered in this study. Defining illness onset as a function of hospital admission is imprecise for two rea sons.…”

Identifying Subtypes of Schizophrenia by Cluster Analyses

“…Although this negative cluster was close to that described by other authors (Strauss et al 1974; Tsuang and Winokur 1974; Wing 1978; Farmer et al 1984), it differed a little in that patients were not characterized by a high level of conceptual disorganization and an early onset of illness. This negative cluster did not include all the same patients as the deficit subgroup (κ = 0.34), probably because of the definition of deficit according to Carpenter et al (1988), in which deficit patients can have positive symptoms associated with negative ones.…”

“…This cluster also contained more males (32.3% vs. 18.2%) and patients having a better premorbid professional adjustment (55.2% vs. 36.4%) than the nondisorganized cluster. The nondisorganized cluster was significantly older with a later onset of hospitalization, resembling the paranoid subtype described by Tsuang and Winokur (1974), Farmer et al (1983, 1984), and Castle et al (1994). This nondisorganized cluster, including patients first hospitalized at later age with pure positive symptoms without disorganization, could also suggest a subgroup including patients with a chronic hallucinatory psychosis as described by Ballet (1912).…”

Mortality Among Patients With Schizophrenia

“…Schizophrenia patients, as a group, have a substantially increased mortality risk. This finding has been reported in numerous studies over many years (0deg&rd 1952;Babigian and Odoroff 1969;Tsuang and Woolson 1977;Saugstad and Odeg&rd 1979;Mortensen and Juel 1990) and is still valid (Tsuang and Simpson 1985;Allebeck 1989;Caldwell and Gottesman 1990;Lesage et al 1990;Black and Fisher 1992). Yet the meaning of this finding is not altogether clear.…”