Reactive psychosis and mortality.

Reactive psychosis is generally thought of as a nosological term of favourable course and outcome. Studies of mortality risk following this psychosis are sparse and inconclusive. This study shows that using mortality as an index of outcome, first-admitted patients with reactive psychosis have as poor an outcome as patients with the endogenous psychoses schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis, and thus an excess mortality risk compared with that of the population in general. Reactive depressed patients have even a higher relative mortality risk than endogenous depressed patients. Certain precautions are attached to the use of diagnostic classification of first admissions and especially for reactive psychosis. But as this is a commonly used diagnostic term in Scandinavian psychiatry, the high relative mortality risk is notable. In the search for methods of prevention, the cause of death will be examined in future studies.