The Age-distribution of Schizophrenia and Neurosis: Findings in a National Sample

The purpose of the present paper is to draw attention to a remarkable similarity in the age-incidence curves of schizophrenia and neurosis when the sexes are combined. Hare and Price (1969), in a study on the season of birth of schizophrenic patients, found that the age-distribution of cases of schizophrenia (I.C.D. 7th Revision nos. 300, 303) seen for the first time at the Bethlem-Maudsley Hospital during the years 1951–1963 was very similar to that of the cases of neurosis (I.C.D. nos. 310–18) seen there during the same period. However, these cases included out-patients as well as in-patients, were not necessarily first-ever attendances at a psychiatric clinic, and, because they had been referred to a teaching hospital which did not serve a particular geographical area, may have been a somewhat unrepresentative series. For these reasons, their findings (illustrated in Fig. 1 of their paper) might have been no more than a coincidence.