| Summary: | Abstract Using three different schizophrenic populations from Northern Finland, gender differences in some sociodemographic variables, age at onset, incidence, treatment, outcome and deinstitutionalization of schizophrenia were examined. The first study population comprises the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort, which is an unselected, general population birth cohort. We followed prospectively 11017 subjects from 16 to 28 years of age by means of the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register. From this study population gender differences at the age of onset and incidence of schizophrenia were calculated. The second study population was formed of 1525 patients who had their first treatment episodes at the closed therapeutic community ward situated at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oulu during 1977–1993. Gender differences were assessed in relation to age at first admission, some sociodemographic variables, degree of active participation of the patients in individual, group, and milieu therapy and institutional outcome of the patients with schizophrenia. The third study population consisted of all the 253 long-stay psychiatric inpatients treated for at least six months without a break during 1992 in the Department of Psychiatry, Oulu University Hospital. From this study population gender differences at the age of onset and in relation to some sociodemographic and clinical variables were studied. The placements after the last discharge and at the end of the follow-up and factors predicting hospitalization after the follow-up were also monitored. There were no statistically significant gender differences regarding age at onset in any of these three different study populations. The time lag between the first psychotic symptoms and the first psychiatric hospitalization was minimal. In the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort study the annual incidence rate of DSM-III-R schizophrenia was relatively high, 7.9 per 10 000 in men and 4.4 in women by the age of 28. In men it was highest in the age group of the 20–24 ...
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