Long Term Mental Illness in Canada: An Epidemiological Perspective on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders *

Canadian national data on psychiatric illness are combined with results from outcome studies to derive figures for the incidence, expectancy, prevalence, prevalence of marked disability, use of institutions and loss of the work force as a result of schizophrenia and affective psychoses. It is hoped that this can be of assistance in planning services and that it will stimulate more direct research into the nature and the scope of the social, psychiatric and economic impact of these illnesses.