Prediction of outcome and utilization of medical services in a prospective study of first onset schizophrenics. Results of a prospective 5-year follow-up study.

After an introduction on design and definition of constructs, followed by an overview on case-finding, description of cohort and epidemiological considerations, this paper presents results on (social) disability (course of disability, prediction of disability), reported symptoms (course of symptomatology, prediction of symptomatology), observed (psychological) impairments (course of impairments, prediction of impairments, and value of impairment scores as predictors) and the utilization of medical services (scale of predominant utilization levels, longitudinal pattern of care, proportions of time in and out of hospital, prediction of length of hospitalization and cumulative time in rehabilitation institutions) in an epidemiological cohort of first onset schizophrenics prospectively over 5 years.