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This study discusses some of the adverse health (and social) outcomes associated with schizophrenia.
New research, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, shows that rates of adverse outcomes, including premature death and violent crime, in people with schizophrenia are increasing, compared to the general population.
The results come from a unique study, led by Dr Seena Fazel, at Oxford University, UK, which analyses long-term adverse outcomes -- including conviction for a violent crime (such as homicide or bodily harm), premature death (before the age of 56), and death by suicide -- between 1972 and 2009 in nearly 25,000 people in Sweden diagnosed with schizophrenia or related disorders.
For the first time, the researchers compared adverse outcomes in people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia to both the general population and to unaffected siblings, allowing them to account for risk factors within families (such as parental criminality or violence) which might be expected to affect the risk of suicide or violent behaviour in siblings.
Overall, the results show that within five years of diagnosis, around 1 in 50 men and women with schizophrenia (2.3% of men and 1.7% of women) died by suicide; around one in 10 (10.7%) of men and around one in 37 (2.7%) of women with schizophrenia were convicted of a violent offence within five years of diagnosis. Overall, men and women with schizophrenia were eight times more likely to die prematurely than the general population.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140603193906.htm
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