Course of paranoid psychoses in relation to diagnostic grouping.

The author stresses the importance of diagnosis in psychiatry and gives a short presentation of the Scandinavian concepts of reactive psychoses and schizophreniform psychoses. On the basis of his own personal follow-up investigations on 301 consecutively admitted patients to the University Psychiatric Clinic in Oslo, followed up through 5-18 years, he concludes that the schizophreniform (schizo-affective) psychosis also in prognostic respects is a group in between. Of the patients with a discharge diagnosis of reactive psychosis, 81% had a favourable course compared to 61% of the patients with a discharge diagnosis of psychosis e genere incerto (Langfeldt's schizophreniform psychoses) and only 23% of the patients with a discharge diagnosis of schizophrenia.