Burned-out schizophrenia: evidence for age effects on schizophrenic symptomatology.

The long-term outcome of chronic schizophrenia has classically been accepted to be pessimistic, most often leading to a terminal demented state. An examination of recent literature that has followed schizophrenic patients into the involutional years is not so convincing. The few studies that so report upon elderly schizophrenics demonstrate substantially altered symptomatology, most often coinciding with the onset of the involutional years (ages 55-64). This under-investigated phenomenon has real implications for the continuing need of institutionalization and/or pharmacologic treatment for these older schizophrenic patients and warrants rigorous investigation.