A major international study threatens to overturn what we thought we knew about schizophrenia.
People with schizophrenia are more likely to get better if they live in poor countries: that's been known for about 25 years. In the 1980s, a series ofpioneering World Health Organization (WHO) studies looked at the prognosis for people diagnosed with schizophrenia around the world.
All of the data showed that people in developed countries were less likely to recover than those from poorer areas.
This paradoxical finding sparked no end of debate. What is it about these countries that makes them a better place to get schizophrenia? Patients in richer countries tend to have access to more and "better" psychiatric care, the latest drugs, and so on. Does this mean that those treatments are useless - worse, harmful? That's been the interpretation of some people.
But is it true? Not always, says a new study, ...
