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- Alem, Atalay, et al.
(author)
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Clinical course and outcome of schizophrenia in a predominantly treatment-naive cohort in rural Ethiopia
- 2009
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In: Schizophrenia Bulletin. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0586-7614 .- 1745-1701. ; 35:3, s. 646-654
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The established view that schizophrenia may have a favorable outcome in developing countries has been recently challenged; however, systematic studies are scarce. In this report, we describe the clinical outcome of schizophrenia among a predominantly treatment-naive cohort in a rural community setting in Ethiopia. The cohort was identified in a 2-stage sampling design using key informants and measurement-based assessment. Follow-up assessments were conducted monthly for a mean duration of 3.4 years (range 1-6 years). After screening 68 378 adults, ages 15-49 years, 321 cases with schizophrenia (82.7% men and 89.6% treatment naive) were identified. During follow-up, about a third (30.8%) of cases were continuously ill while most of the remaining cohort experienced an episodic course. Only 5.7% of the cases enjoyed a near-continuous complete remission. In the final year of follow-up, over half of the cases (54%) were in psychotic episode, while 17.6% were in partial remission and 27.4% were in complete remission for at least the month preceding the follow-up assessment. Living in a household with 3 or more adults, later age of onset, and taking antipsychotic medication for at least 50% of the follow-up period predicted complete remission. Although outcome in this setting appears better than in developed countries, the very low proportion of participants in complete remission supports the recent observation that the outcome of schizophrenia in developing countries may be heterogeneous rather than uniformly favorable. Improving access to treatment may be the logical next step to improve outcome of schizophrenia in this setting.
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| 4. |
- Leitman, David I, et al.
(author)
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Getting the Cue : Sensory Contributions to Auditory Emotion Recognition Impairments in Schizophrenia.
- 2008
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In: Schizophrenia Bulletin. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0586-7614 .- 1745-1701. ; 36:3, s. 545-556
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Individuals with schizophrenia show reliable deficits in the ability to recognize emotions from vocal expressions. Here, we examined emotion recognition ability in 23 schizophrenia patients relative to 17 healthy controls using a stimulus battery with well-characterized acoustic features. We further evaluated performance deficits relative to ancillary assessments of underlying pitch perception abilities. As predicted, patients showed reduced emotion recognition ability across a range of emotions, which correlated with impaired basic tone matching abilities. Emotion identification deficits were strongly related to pitch-based acoustic cues such as mean and variability of fundamental frequency. Whereas healthy subjects' performance varied as a function of the relative presence or absence of these cues, with higher cue levels leading to enhanced performance, schizophrenia patients showed significantly less variation in performance as a function of cue level. In contrast to pitch-based cues, both groups showed equivalent variation in performance as a function of intensity-based cues. Finally, patients were less able than controls to differentiate between expressions with high and low emotion intensity, and this deficit was also correlated with impaired tone matching ability. Both emotion identification and intensity rating deficits were unrelated to valence of intended emotions. Deficits in both auditory emotion identification and more basic perceptual abilities correlated with impaired functional outcome. Overall, these findings support the concept that auditory emotion identification deficits in schizophrenia reflect, at least in part, a relative inability to process critical acoustic characteristics of prosodic stimuli and that such deficits contribute to poor global outcome.
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| 5. |
- Levander, Sten, et al.
(author)
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Costs of schizophrenia during five years
- 2007
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In: Schizophrenia Bulletin. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1745-1701 .- 0586-7614. ; 33:2, s. 485-485
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)
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