Short-term symptomatic and functional outcomes of schizophrenia in Butajira, Ethiopia

Prospective outcome studies based on a community sample of mostly neuroleptic naive cases of schizophrenia are uncommon.

To describe short-term symptomatic and functional outcomes of schizophrenia, and potential predictors of outcome.

After a baseline assessment, 63 incident and 208 prevalent cases of schizophrenia were followed by a yearly clinical assessment for an average of 2.5 (range 1-4) years. Scores of negative symptoms and positive symptoms were used as indicators of symptomatic outcomes. SF-36 scores of physical and social functioning, and role limitation due to mental health problems were used as indicators of functional outcomes. Several variables were evaluated as potential predictors of outcome in random coefficient models.

Functioning and other measures of health related quality of life were significantly diminished in cases as compared to the general population of the area at baseline and follow up. Of the socio-demographic and clinical factors evaluated, only lower negative and positive symptom scores were significantly associated with improvements in functioning. The level of functioning observed in cases from Butajira was lower than that reported for cases from developed countries.

Our findings are not in accord with other outcome studies that have reported better functional outcome for cases of schizophrenia from developing countries.