OBJECTIVE

To determine the features of the course of young-onset schizophrenia based on the long-term follow-up results (20—25 years).

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The results of the long-term follow-up study of 320 patients with young-onset schizophrenia referred for psychiatric care in an outpatient clinic in Moscow from 1990 to 1994 were analyzed. Correlations between typological variants of the patient’s condition during the follow-up and features of the dynamics of the schizophrenic process at different stages of the disease were studied. Clinical-psychopathological, clinical follow-up, clinical-epidemiological and a psychometric method were applied.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

The severity of symptoms at all stages of the disease correlates with typological variants of conditions at the stage of long-term follow-up. In the first type, there is an accumulation of personality desorders and the most prognostically favorable variants of the initial stage, manifestations of psychotic states, the disease often manifests with only one episode and has a regressive character, the disease process fades quite quickly, mainly high-and medium-quality remissions are formed. In the second type, there is an accumulation of less favorable signs — prolonged variants of the initial stage with a predominance of negative disorders, hallucinatory-delusional manifestations of psychoses with exacerbations after 10—12 years, the high frequency of progressive forms of disease course and remissions of moderate to low quality. Type 3 is characterized by the most severe combinations of positive and negative symptoms, paranoid forms of the initial stage, paranoid and catatonic manifestations of psychoses, a high number of relapses at all stages of the course, low-quality remissions and frequent transition of the disease to a continuous form.