Dead and forgotten--postmortem time before discovery as indicator of social isolation and inadequate mental healthcare in schizophrenia.

The psychiatric care of patients with schizophrenia has changed dramatically following the "deinstitutionalization" of mental health care in many Western countries. In a study of forensic autopsies in the Swedish city of Malmö between 1952 and 2005, we found an increase over time in the number of patients with schizophrenia whose bodies were not discovered until late after death, which correlated closely with the decrease in the number of hospital beds in the psychiatric services used by this group of patients. This indicates a strong increase in the social isolation and unavailability of adequate mental health care for patients with schizophrenia.

Neurocognitive and psychopathological correlates of self-monitoring ability in schizophrenia.

In a previous study reported by our group one salient finding was that many patients with schizophrenia appeared to be unable to judge their own quality of life (QoL) and that this inability was associated with negative symptoms. The association between negative symptoms, poor self-monitoring capacity and lack of insight might be explained by a common underlying factor, i.e.

Schizophrenia and contact with health and social services: a Nordic multi-centre study.

Background: In a Nordic multi-centre study investigating the life and care situation of persons with schizophrenia living in the community, factors explaining use of health and social services were examined.

Method: Four hundred and eighteen individuals with schizophrenia from 10 sites were interviewed about their contact with different services (support functions within and outside the mental health services, general practitioners (GPs), physicians in the mental health, psychotherapy, day-care and inpatient treatment), psychopathology, social network and needs for care.

Results: Physicians and support contacts within the mental health system were most used and GPs and psychotherapy least.

Symptoms profile and quality of life in rural and urban patients with chronic psychoses.

The symptoms profile (modified Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, PANSS) and the quality of life (Lancashire Quality of Life Profile, LQLP, and the Quality of Life Scale 100, QLS-100) were compared between two groups of patients with chronic psychoses: a rural group of 19 patients living in villages with < or =300-10,000 inhabitants and far away from a large city, and an urban group of 19 patients living in a major city with 250,000 inhabitants. The patients were matched pair-wise for sex, age, global assessment of functioning (GAF) and psychiatric symptoms (modified PANSS, total score). Seventeen of the pairs were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and two pairs with delusional disorder.