A follow‐up study of a child psychiatric clientele with special regard to the diagnosis of psychosis

Abstract

A 20 yr follow-up of a child psychiatric clientele of 322 patients demonstrates that nearly 1/3 were admitted to psychiatric departments or mental hospitals in adulthood. One tenth belonged to the group with psychoses either as a child or grown-up. While the incidence of manic-depressive psychosis did not differ from a normal population of the same sex and age, the child psychiatric clientele is overrepresented by psychotic patients later on diagnosed as schizophrenia. The outcome of infantile psychosis was in half of the cases chronic psychosis; 5 of 10 psychosis proto-infantilis patients were diagnosed schizophrenia in adulthood. This result is not in accordance with the modern view that psychosis proto-infantilis is a special disease with no clinical connection to schizophrenia. The clinical entity of infantile psychosis and borderline psychosis seems to be affirmed by a common clinical and diagnostic course into borderline psychosis or schizoid character disorders. Nine patients with psychosis in adulthood did not belong to the group of psychosis in childhood.