Study challenges idea that schizophrenia is distinct in developing and developed regions
Mar 14, 2007 - 8:38:10 AM
, Reviewed by: Dr. Ankush Vidyarthi
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In this sense, the 1% figure is a myth that conceals considerable variability in actual prevalence between settings.
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By University of Chicago,
[RxPG] Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested that the course and symptomatic expression of schizophrenia is relatively more benign in developing societies. However, a new study from Current Anthropology challenges this assumption, comparing biological and cultural indicators of schizophrenia in urban, Western societies with study data from the island of Palau, which has one of the highest rates of schizophrenia diagnosis in the world today.
A 1% average worldwide population prevalence of schizophrenia is routinely interpreted in the medical literature as implying a uniform distribution, write Roger J. Sullivan (California State University, Sacramento), John S. Allen (University of Southern California), and Karen L. Nero (University of Canterbury, New Zealand). In this sense, the 1% figure is a myth that conceals considerable variability in actual prevalence between settings.
The researchers point to the islands in Micronesia as an example of this variation. Prevalence of schizophrenia ranges from a low of 0.4% in the Marshall Islands to 1.7% in the western Republic of Palau a more than fourfold difference. The expression of schizophrenia in Palau and greater Micronesia is also extraordinarily gendered, with rates of affliction approximately two times higher among males than among females.
Recognizing this high variability in prevalence between populations is important, write the researchers, . . . Genetic perspectives tend to emphasize uniformity in prevalence and symptomatic expression while contextual sociocultural perspectives tend to emphasize variability.
The authors combined quantitative clinical diagnostic tools of symptoms like poor impulse control and eye-tracking with qualitative methods such as patient interviews. Compared to a sample of New Yorkers and other similar studies in New Zealand and Scotland, their findings challenge the idea put forth by the WHO and other research that schizophrenia in developing regions is distinct from and more benign than schizophrenia in developed regions. The researchers also dispute the common assumption that schizophrenia in developing nations is a consequence of development.
These analyses have identified unique aspects of the expression of schizophrenia in Palau, but more striking to us are the similarities that emerge when comparing the Palauan data with research findings in [Western] settings, the authors write.
Indeed, one of the few significant differences between the Palauan sample and the Western sample was the proportion of participants living at home. (Eighty-seven percent of the Palauan participants lived at home.) Notably, extensive kin-based levels of support have been cited by the WHO to explain the supposedly more benign expression of schizophrenia in developing regions.
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About Dr. Ankush Vidyarthi
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This news story has been reviewed by Dr. Ankush Vidyarthi before its publication on RxPG News website. Dr. Ankush Vidyarthi, MBBS is a senior editor of RxPG News. He is also managing the marketing and public relations for the website. In his capacity as the senior editor, he is responsible for content related to mental health and psychiatry. His areas of special interest are mass-media and psychopathology.
RxPG News is committed to promotion and implementation of Evidence Based Medical Journalism in all channels of mass media including internet.
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Additional information about the news article
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Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Current Anthropology is a transnational journal devoted to research on humankind, encompassing the full range of anthropological scholarship on human cultures and on the human and other primate species. Communicating across the subfields, the journal features papers in a wide variety of areas, including social, cultural, and physical anthropology as well as ethnology and ethnohistory, archaeology and prehistory, folklore, and linguistics. For more information, please see our Web site: www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA
Sullivan, Roger J., John S. Allen, and Karen L. Nero, Schizophrenia in Palau: A Biocultural Analysis. Current Anthropology 48:2.
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