Association of gender and schizophrenia subtype with age at disease onset in a cohort from rural Turkey

Background and Objectives: This study was designed to investigate the association of the gender and subtype diagnosis with the onset age of the disease, marriage, reproductive rates in the schizophrenic inpatients. Methods: Total of 463 patients (329 males and 134 females) hospitalized with the diagnosis of schizophrenia according to DSM-IV criteria and who were between 15-65 years of age were included in the study. We evaluated the age, gender, marital status, number of children, onset of the disease and subtype of schizophrenia. Results: Mean of onset of the disease score was higher statistically in the females (27.6 ± 4.3) than the males (23.7 ± 3.9) (p < 0.05) in our study. The paranoid subtype was the commonest, while women were more likely to be married than men, men had more children than women; and the paranoid subtype were more likely to be married than the other groups. Conclusions: Onset age of schizophrenia was four years higher in the women than in men and that the rates of the schizophrenia subtypes were consistent with those detected in the other studies demonstrates that these rates were determined by neurobiological mechanisms rather than socio-cultural factors.