Course, outcome and diagnosis stability of early-onset schizophrenia in Yunnan Province, China-a three years follow-up study

The aim of the study was to describe diagnostic stability and psychosocial outcomes of subjects with early-onset schizophrenia (EOS). All the subjects who had been hospitalized in the Department of Psychiatry of the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University between January 2011 and July 2015 with the diagnosis of International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 defined schizophrenia, and discharged from the hospital for more than 12 months were enrolled to the study. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview was applied for life-time ICD-10 diagnoses, and Personal and Social Performance (PSP) for global function evaluation. Altogether 249 patients were targeted for follow-up, in which 101 were followed up and the dropout rate was 59.4%. After average 37.2 +/- 16.2 months, 92 patients (including 1 death) were still met the ICD-10 diagnosis of schizophrenia (F20). In terms of global functioning, 48.5% of patients had good outcome, 43.6% had moderate outcome, and 7.9% had poor outcome. A relatively high diagnostic stability of ICD-10 defined schizophrenia was obtained in the current study.Moreover, our results draw a much more optimistic picture of the outcome for EOS than what has previously been reported from Western counties.