A typology of care episodes experienced by people with schizophrenia in an English town

The paper presents an analysis of the psychiatric care histories of people diagnosed with schizophrenia which is set within the policy context of the deinstitutionalisation debate. The durations of successive terms of in-patient and community care were drawn from the records of the Salford Psychiatric Case Register and related to the age, gender and social isolation of each patient. Strong age-sex interactions are revealed by the tendencies for young male patients to exhibit rapid hospital readmission and discharge rates and elderly female patients to experience long terms of in-patient care. The role of social isolation in relation to these care durations turns out to be more restricted.