Riecher-Rössler A, Fätkenheuer B, Löffler W, Maurer K, Häfner H
Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, FRG.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 1992 May;27(3):122-8. doi: 10.1007/BF00788757.
Schizophrenia is a disease characterized by a distinctly higher age at onset and at first admission in females than in males. In a systematic study on gender differences in schizophrenia we have confirmed this finding using different sets of data, in particular through the examination of a large and representative sample of first-admitted patients. The question addressed in this paper is whether marital status influences this sex-specific age difference. Assuming that marriage or a stable relationship is a protective factor in schizophrenia, delaying the onset of the disease or first hospitalization, the hypothesis was formulated that the later age of onset in women is at least partly explained by their generally earlier age of marriage. Testing this hypothesis illustrates some of the methodological problems that often occur when a causal analysis of social data is attempted. The problems emerge especially when both the dependent variable (age of onset/first admission) and the independent variable (marital status) are essentially related to age. First results appearing to indicate an influence of marital status on age at first admission did not bear a critical interpretation.
精神分裂症是一种疾病，其特征是女性发病和首次入院的年龄明显高于男性。在一项关于精神分裂症性别差异的系统研究中，我们使用不同数据集证实了这一发现，特别是通过对大量具有代表性的首次入院患者样本进行检查。本文探讨的问题是婚姻状况是否会影响这种性别特异性的年龄差异。假设婚姻或稳定关系是精神分裂症的一个保护因素，会延迟疾病发作或首次住院时间，于是提出了这样一个假设，即女性发病年龄较晚至少部分是由她们普遍较早的结婚年龄所导致的。对这一假设进行检验揭示了在尝试对社会数据进行因果分析时经常出现的一些方法学问题。这些问题尤其在因变量（发病年龄/首次入院年龄）和自变量（婚姻状况）都与年龄本质上相关时出现。最初似乎表明婚姻状况对首次入院年龄有影响的结果经不起批判性解读。
