[Long-term course of psychoses in continuously hospitalized patients]

Thorough reexamination of 70 patients in a long-term psychiatric ward led to partial revision of the diagnoses. Classified on the basis of Leohards's differential diagnostics, the large proportion of schizophrenics has dropped by over a third from 78% to 47%. Half of the 22 psychosis originally considered to be schizophrenia proved to be curable phasic and cycloid psychoses which had previously been overlooked and the other half were mental disturbances caused by brain-organic damage. A third of the chronic mental illnesses were found to be rooted in somatic brain lesions.