User:H2012AL/Epidemiology of schizophrenia

United States[edit]
'''Schizophrenia is a somewhat rare disease affecting approximately 3.2 million Americans in the United States. Also, in an average year, about 100,000 individuals will be diagnosed with schizophrenia'''. In 2010, there were approximately 397,200 hospitalizations for schizophrenia in the United States. About 88,600 (22.3%) were readmitted within 30 days.

Burden of Schizophrenia
'''Schizophrenia is not only a hard illness to maintain, but can cause other health problems as a result. Approximately half of individuals diagnosed with Schizophrenia will also be diagnosed with another mental/behavioral disorder in their lifetime. These factors cause individuals lifespans to decrease about 28.5 years. This is also known as premature mortality.'''

Season of Birth[edit]
'''This disease has been found to be correlated with the season of birth. It's known that individuals with the disease are more likely to born in the winter months. Though the relative risk is small, persons born in the winter months are about 10% more likely to develop schizophrenia than those who are born within the summer months. Factors including the weather during these months has been found to affect the rate of this illness.'''

Maternal Infections and Diseases[edit]
'''Going along with the season of birth of a child diagnosed with Schizophrenia, a series of ecological studies have found when mothers are in their second trimester of pregnancy when a flu epidemic arises, a higher risk of schizophrenia among the children is present. This causing possible maternal infection and in turn increased risk of infection and diseases within the offspring. Also, maternal-fetal factors can account for this increased risk. Many factors including maternal vitamin D deficiency while being pregnant and laboring during the winter months and lower fetal body temperatures being present during the colder months fall under the maternal-fetal chronobiological dysfunction hypothesis. Other diseases and infections in mothers whom are pregnant have been linked to increased risk of schizophrenia. These include, mothers who have the herpes simplex virus, meningitis, and even celiac disease. In a Danish study, children whose mothers have celiac disease were two times more likely to develop schizophrenia later in life.'''