Admission of British Caribbeans to mental hospitals: is it a cohort effect?

Abstract

Work in the 1980s has shown that the high incidence of schizophrenia in British Caribbean men is restricted to those born after 1950. Data from a study of admissions in three London health districts suggested that the greater part of this excess risk may be confined to those born before 1966. This suggests that the group of British Caribbean men experiencing a high frequency of schizophrenia could be a tightly delineated birth cohort. If confirmed in wider studies, this could have important implications for the elucidation of the causes of one type of schizophrenia.