Mental Health: schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness. It is, however, a difficult disease to understand and difficult or sometimes impossible to diagnose as a result of changing diagnostic criteria: the heterogeneity of study populations and the variability of illness courses (Philp, Watson and Muir 2002). There are 3 commonly accepted types of schizophrenia:  paranoid schizophrenia; catatonic schizophrenia and disorganised or hebephrenic schizophrenia.

Estimates in published literature of the numbers of cases vary according to which study or population is being examined. The incidence (number of new cases per year) from different studies appears to be between 0.1 and 0.3 per 1 000 population. The prevalence (numbers present at a given time) in published studies varies from about one to ten per 1 000 (Mental Health Information in Scotland(1386kb): information sources and selected insights, 2002).  A recent review carried out byNHS Quality Improvement Scotland 2003 (571kb) looking at quality assurance of clinical services for schizophrenia estimated that there approximately 12,000 people with schizophrenia currently in contact with services in Scotland though it is acknowledged that this was likely to be an underestimate.