LAUSR

That negative view persisted well into the late 20th century despite growing empirical evidence, especially from Europe, that this syndrome was associated with heterogeneity in course, including a favorable outcome in many persons. The bias was so ingrained that in the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia, initiated in 1968, only the Washington center used developmental, prognostic, and follow-up outcome scales with multiple dimensions to capture the heterogeneity of course of illness; it demonstrated that the outcome was mainly predicted by developmental factors rather than by psychotic symptoms. A 1988 issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin (14:4) that contained reviews of several long-term follow-up investigations from Europe and North America, illustrated a wide range of courses including good outcomes. In a study in Vermont, Harding and colleagues2 followed a longitudinal cohort of individuals with schizophrenia for decades after initial hospitalization and found that one-half to two-thirds of them had substantial improvement.