Perinatal distress and prognosis of psychotic illness.

The medical histories of a group of 511 patients hospitalized for schizophrenia were examined for the occurrence of perinatal distress. These patients were part of a 40-year follow-up study, so that their prognostic outcome was known at the time of this study. In this way, 200 cases of chronic schizophrenia were compared with 311 cases of psychotics with good prognosis. It was found that a history of perinatal distress was much more common in the poor prognosis group than in the good prognosis group. This difference could not be accounted for by age or family history of psychiatric illness.