title: Late-life schizophrenia: editor's introduction.
abstract: Until recently, most of the research on schizophrenia has focused on young adults. With increasing longevity, the number of older schizophrenia patients in the population is expected to grow. Late-life schizophrenia patients fall into two groups: those who developed schizophrenia for the first time in later adulthood (late-onset schizophrenia) and those who developed the illness earlier in life and are presently middle-aged or elderly. There is a scarcity of published studies on late-life schizophrenia. The available data tend to challenge the commonly held view of schizophrenia as a disorder with onset restricted to the first half of life and a progressively deteriorating course. Further work on this important but long-neglected patient population is urgently needed for clinical as well as research purposes.
authors.affiliation: Geriatric Psychiatry Clinical Research Center (116A), Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego, CA.
authors.forename: D V
authors.initials: DV
authors.lastname: Jeste
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology