Journal
AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY
Volume 42, Issue 11, Pages 941-949Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/00048670802415376
Keywords
capture-recapture; ethnicity; New Zealand; prevalence; schizophrenia
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Funding
- Mental Health Research and Development Strategy, Ministry of Health, New Zealand
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Objective: The aim of the present study was to estimate the 12 month prevalence of schizophrenia in the Maori population of New Zealand. Method: Mental health data from two national sources were obtained for the period 2000-2003. A simple count of unique individuals with schizophrenia was used to estimate contact prevalence and a four-list capture-recapture procedure to estimate population prevalence. Results: Contact prevalence was significantly lower than the estimated population prevalence for both groups. The estimated 12 month prevalence of schizophrenia for Maori (0.97%) was significantly higher than for non-Maori (0.32%), even after adjustment for age, case under-ascertainment, and socioeconomic deprivation. Conclusions: The prevalence of schizophrenia among Maori appears to be elevated, although limitations in diagnostic reliability and recording of ethnicity must be considered. This adds further evidence of worldwide variation in the prevalence of schizophrenia. Capture-recapture provides a reliable cost-effective alternative to epidemiological surveys for estimating the prevalence of low-prevalence disorders such as schizophrenia.
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