Mobility of schizophrenic patients, non-psychotic patients and the general population in a case register area

Abstract

This preliminary study attempts to evaluate the effect of a community psychiatric service on residential mobility by comparing a cohort of schizophrenic patients over a 5-year period with that of non-psychotic and general population control groups in South Verona, a case register area in Northern Italy. No significant differences were found between the groups for different types of movement (within South Verona/outside catchment area of South Verona/outside City of Verona), except for movements within South Verona between the schizophrenic group and neurotic group. The former tended to move less than the latter. The sociodemographic factors associated with movements of the general population in Verona were being male and single, whereas place of birth was less important. The results showed that in the two patient groups as well as in the general population in South Verona, the percentages of those who moved outside the case-register area ranged between 1.5%-4.4% over a one-year period, and between 7.3%-13.8% over a five-year period, indicating a relatively consistent denominator for the Case Register.

Treatment prevalence and incidence of schizophrenia in Quebec using a population health services perspective: different algorithms, different estimates

“…There are several possible conditions that could result in non-detection of potential cases of schizophrenia during the study period such as: people consulting at CLSCs (for algorithm 4 only), people who did not need the services for a long period of time (10 years), patients who used services for other reasons without being diagnosed with schizophrenia, patients with a misclassification of the disease, people who left the country. Few studies examining the risk of migration in people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia exist, but those run with administrative databases in public managed care system like Italy, showed a similar migration of people with schizophrenia compared to people with non-psychotic disorders or no disorders [47]. In Quebec, the interprovincial mobility is very low (less than 5%) [48].…”

Residential Mobility and Severe Mental Illness: A Population-based Analysis

“…This was significantly lower than the national mobility rate of 20% over this time period. While Lesage and Tansella (1989) found no significant differences among their study cohorts in urban to rural migration, McNaught et al (1997) noted that the persons with SMI were more likely to move into inner city areas than out of them.…”

“…Two studies found the residential mobility of a cohort diagnosed with schizophrenia was either not significantly different from that of the general population (Lesage & Tansella, 1989;McNaught et al, 1997), or was significantly lower than that of a cohort of individuals with non-psychotic disorders (Lesage & Tansella, 1989). Chesteen, Bergeron, and Addison (1970) found that only 4% of their psychiatric patient sample moved an average of once a year, while 8% moved an average of once every 2 years.…”

“…Data are primarily obtained from the case registries of specific facilities or service providers (e.g., Abood et al, 2002;Chesteen et al, 1970;Lamont et al, 2000); this limits the generalizability of study findings to the larger population of individuals diagnosed with SMI. Moreover, population-based data have rarely been used to select comparison groups that are representative of either the general population or of populations with different types of health conditions (e.g., Lesage & Tansella, 1989). These comparative data are critical for understanding how the mobility of individuals with SMI may differ from that of other groups.…”

Persons with schizophrenia migrate towards urban areas due to the development of their disorder or its prodromata

“…Although the drift hypothesis was first described by Lapouse et al (1956) and later by Freeman (1994), no population-based studies investigated whether persons with schizophrenia migrated towards larger cities more often than healthy controls due to the development of the disorder (Lesage and Tansella, 1989). If persons with schizophrenia more often migrate towards urban areas than healthy controls, previous studies reporting urban-rural differences in the prevalence of schizophrenia present upward biased estimates, whereas studies reporting urban-rural differences in the incidence rate of schizophrenia will have no such bias.…”