The assessment of psychopathological symptoms and the course of schizophrenia depending on gender, duration of the disease, somatic comorbidity and suicide attempts

Objectives
Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder with periods of exacerbation and remission. The preva lence during life is estimated at 0.5–1%. The study aims to prove that there are differences in the prevalence of positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia de pending on the gender and duration of the disease, and to confirm that there is a relationship between the factors such as the occurrence of somatic diseases and the risk of suicide attempts, and a specific clinical picture and course of the disease.

Material and methods
The study included 76 patients with schizophrenia treated with standard antipsychotic pharmacotherapy. The severity of psychopathological symptoms was assessed after admission to hospital us ing the scale of positive and negative symptoms and the sociodemographic survey created for the purposes of this study.

Results
The first episode of schizophrenia in men occurs earlier than in women. There are no statistically signif icant differences in the psychopathological picture of the disease in men and women. The severity of negative symptoms increases with the duration of the illness for the entire population of the study. Patients with schizo phrenia without co-occurring somatic diseases have more severe positive symptoms of illness. There are no statistically significant differences in the group of pa tients who attempted suicide and who did not.

Conclusions
Positive symptoms of the disease are more common in younger patients without somatic diseases while negative symptoms increase with age. Men develop first symptoms of schizophrenia earlier than women. It is not possible to distinguish the dominant group of psychopathological symptoms for women and men in patients who suffer somatic diseases and attempt suicide more often.