[International study of schizophrenia based on a WHO program. Purposes and methods of the study]

The authors report on a new transcultural investigation of schizophrenia in the framework of the WHO programme which involved 13 research centres from 10 countries and was aimed at identifying the prevalence, clinical manifestations and regularities of the course of schizophrenia in different countries. The authors discuss methodological requirements to the conduction of large-scale clinical and epidemiological cross-cultural studies and analyze the methodological experience of the current WHO programme.