Psychiatry Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2008
Journal
Indian Journal of Social Psychiatry
Volume
24
Issue
1/2
First Page
5
Last Page
12
Abstract
Schizophrenia is a complex neurobehavioral disorder known to be associated with poor outcome. It causes significant disability in patients and burden of care amongst relatives. Outcome in developing countries has been reported to be far better than western world, which has come into scientific scanner recently. Wide gap exists between expectations of outcome amongst patients, relatives, caregivers and professionals, which is possibly because of limitations in measurements tools. Significant number of patients remain marginalized without improvement in social & occupational functioning preventing their integration into mainstream of society despite 'clinically reported good outcome' and significant advancement in treatments. The contemporary outcome measure does not capture real-life situations. The concept of response, remission and recovery is being revisited scientifically. There is a strong need to develop culture specific, comprehensive and reliable outcome measures for schizophrenia, which reflects clinical and social outcome in multidimensional measures.
Notes
Dr. Amresh Shrivastava has received the publisher's permission to make this article freely available online.