The prevalence of schizophrenia and affective disease in Jamaica - Abstract

ABSTRACT

This study sought to establish the period of prevalence of schizophrenia and the affective disorders in Jamaica. Data were collected in a National Mental Health Case Register from the Community Mental Health Service, the Bellevue Mental Hospital and the University Hospital of the West Indies. Data from patients seen in the year 1992 with the diagnoses of schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis and depression were examined. The prevalence rates for these conditions were established on the basis of total population data for that year. The period prevalence rate for schizophrenia was found to be 2.1 per 1000, for manic-depressive psychosis 0.16 per 1000, and for depression 0.61 per 1000. The age-corrected (15ñ) prevalence rates were 3.1 per 1000, 0.23 per 1000 and 0.88 per 1000, resptively. There was a significant male preponderance for schizophrenia (p=0.02) and a female preponderance for depression (p = 0.0000001). The present findings for the prevalence rate of schizophrenis are more in keeping with those studies which suggest a unitary prevalence of this condiiton worldwide (AU)