Vital statistics, demography, and schizophrenia: Editor's introduction

The Guest Editor introduces this Theme Issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin with an overview of the kinds of subject matters appropriate for a comprehensive understanding of the vital statistics and demography relating to schizophrenia and schizophrenic patients-births, deaths, marriages, divorces, fertility, age, sex, race, occupation, place of residence, season of birth, class mobility, homelessness, criminality, industrialization, and suicide. Major sources of the statistics relating to schizophrenia are listed. He calls for a national case register and the use of a unique identifier with linkage across data bases in various branches of government so as to inform a descriptive as well as an experimental (hypothesis-testing) epidemiology.