Recovery From Schizophrenia: Psychiatry And Political Economy

122 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SCHIZOPHRENIAto compare separately the cure rates for acute and chronic patients admitted toseveral British and American hospitals before 1842. The American recovery ratesfor acute patients were substantially better than the British. It may reasonably beassumed that these figures for recent cases are more comparable than those fortotal admissions. Undetermined numbers of chronically psychotic and dementedpatients, epileptics and mentally retarded amongst the general admissions largelydetermined the overall recovery rate, which, as we may see in Table 5.6, borelittle relationship to the cure rate in acute illness. Significant differences in thecauses of acute mental illness, however, could conceivably have accounted for thedisparity in recovery rates. Thurnam argued, for example, that more of theAmerican hospital admissions were suffering from alcohol-related psychoses anddelirium tremens, which ended either in early recovery or death. 102 If thisopinion were correct, we would expect to find higher death rates in theAmerican asylums (in fact, as we have seen, they were lower) and higher recoveryrates in male patients (which was true at Bloomingdale Asylum, but not atWorcester 103 ). Whatever the causes, it is clear that there was a distinctly betterTable 5.6 Percentage of admissions discharged “recovered” from British and Americanasylums according to duration of illnessSource: Thurnam, Observations and Essays on the Statistics of Insanity, p. 57. Statistics forOhio Asylum are added from Grob, Mental Institutions in America, p. 182.Notes: a Private patients only.bPrivate and pauper patients.cCases of 1–10 years duration.dCases of up to 10 years duration.