[Mortality of schizophrenic patients--a study of 170 cases].

170 schizophrenic patients, who were treated, between 1971 and 1973, in a mental hospital, in 2 night clinics and a social psychiatric outpatient clinic, were examined, 12 to 13 years later, with regard to rate of death. 7 of the 46 night clinic patients, 1.4% per year, and 2 of the 46 hospital patients, 0.4% per year, had died, all of them by suicide or a psychotic motivated self-destructive act. 16 of the 78 outpatients had died, 1.5% per year, whereby 10 committed suicide (0.99% per year). In comparison with the Swiss mortality tables and accounting for sex and age factors, the death rate by the examined schizophrenics is significantly higher.