Schizophrenia in Thailand: prevalence and burden of disease

A previous estimate of the burden of schizophrenia in Thailand relied on epidemiological estimates from elsewhere. The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence and disease burden of schizophrenia in Thailand using local data sources that recently have become available.

The prevalence of schizophrenia was estimated from a community mental health survey supplemented by a count of hospital admissions. Using data from recent meta-analyses of the risk of mortality and remission, we derived incidence and average duration using DisMod software. We used treated disability weights based on patient and clinician ratings from our own local survey of patients in contact with mental health services and applied methods from Australian Burden of Disease and cost-effectiveness studies. We applied untreated disability weights from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. Uncertainty analysis was conducted using Monte Carlo simulation.

The prevalence of schizophrenia at ages 15-59 in the Thai population was 8.8 per 1,000 (95% CI: 7.2, 10.6) with a male-to-female ratio of 1.1-to-1. The disability weights from local data were somewhat lower than the GBD weights. The disease burden in disability-adjusted life years was similar in men (70,000; 95% CI: 64,000, 77, 000) and women (75,000; 95% CI: 69,000, 83,000). The impact of using the lower Thai disability weights on the DALY estimates was small in comparison to the uncertainty in prevalence.

Prevalence of schizophrenia was more critical to an accurate estimate of burden of disease in Thailand than variations in disability weights.