Introduction: Schizophrenia is a chronic and one of the most severe mental disorders. From many years studies regarding mortality among people suffering from schizophrenia are being conducted as a way of controlling indirectly the effectiveness of medical care and therapy.
Aim: The aim of this paper was to determine the course of studies of mortality in schizophrenia and to analyze possibilities of using this kind of studies to evaluate changes in mental care system in Poland.
Material: This paper is a review of European literature concerning studies of mortality in schizophrenia. Most of the analyzed publications were created in Northern and Western Europe. There are no international publications originating from Southern and Eastern Europe. Directions of current studies include changes of causes of death in persons with a diagnosis of schizophrenia over years, coexistence of somatic diseases, medicine's impact on mortality in schizophrenia and worse access to medical care in comparison to mentally healthy people.
Conclusions: Mortality in schizophrenia is a useful factor in clinical studies enabling evaluation health effects of changes in mental health care system, what allows creation of system based on scientific evidence.
Keywords: epidemiology; mortality; schizophrenia.