The incidence of schizophrenia in New South Wales, Australia. A psychiatric register study.

Age-specific estimates of the incidence of schizophrenia in NSW, Australia, have been made using two methods, one based on a psychiatric register and the other based on routinely collected hospital morbidity data. Similar results were obtained by both methods. The estimates lie towards the bottom of the range of incidence estimates of schizophrenia that have been published for some other countries, and are lower than estimates from a number of U.S. studies. The diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia employed by Australian psychiatrists conform closely to DSM-III criteria.