[Outcome, course and prognosis of the vocational status of psychiatric patients hospitalized for the 1st time--results of a multiple factor study].

In the framework of a prospective longitudinal investigation, the occupational course of first-admission psychiatric patients was analyzed for the first year (1980) and the fifth (1984) post-discharge from the clinic. Findings indicate that, to quite an important degree, tendencies towards occupational disintegration had existed already immediately after the first in-patient treatment episode. This applied almost totally independent of the clinical diagnosis given at the time of the first hospitalization. Only persons with substance abuse illness had been affected clearly less often, the situation four years later being however comparable. Except for the groups of neurotic and personality disorders, the occupational situation had by then however tightened drastically for all of the diagnostic groups, a structural analysis making it clear that this development had initiated already in the course of the first year. Thus, all patients who had been without work over the entire first year of the five-year period, had already reached the "terminal point" in their employment history. As far as diagnoses are concerned, our study confirms the experience that a schizophrenic illness will by no means always entail a straight course toward an unfavourable outcome. The investigation at the same time however also indicated that non-schizophrenic illnesses take a more unfavourable course than had been expected. In relation to earlier longitudinal catamnestic studies of persons with schizophrenia, the findings for our schizophrenic patients moreover were markedly worse, this discrepancy being presumed to be accounted for by the different methods applied, different selection criteria, as well as differences in economic activity at the time.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)