| Summary: | One of the few things concerning dementia praecox, or schizophrenia, upon which there is general agreement, is the fact that it is the most important single psychiatric diagnostic category. It constitutes about 20 per cent of all first admissions to mental institutions and accounts for about 45 per cent to 50 per cent of the total resident population of mental hospitals. It is this tremendous importance of the problem, experienced as a daily impact in long hospital corridors, which instigated this work. It was further stimulated by many case histories of tragic dimensions, by the embarrassment in facing unhappy relatives and the uneasiness of facing students with inadequate information. This book is, in many ways, a review of the work done on dementia praecox, particularly in the past ten years. More than a review, it is meant to be a roll call and a stock-taking. The underlying idea in the review, is to show not only what work has been done, but where certain suggestive trends meet, what has been omitted or overlooked, and what all the information we have adds up to. It should be an arrow to the future, pointing to what should next be done to ascertain one point or to discard another hypothesis. Reviewing the publications, we have arrived at, and are suggesting, some tentative hypotheses concerning the etiological factors in dementia praecox. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).
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