BACKGROUND: The concept of self-disorders in schizophrenia has gained substantial interest and it has now been established empirically that self-disorders aggregate in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders but not in other mental disorders or in healthy controls. Yet, the issue of temporal persistence has not been addressed.

AIM: The aim of this study is to examine the temporal persistence of self-disorders.

METHODS: 96 first admission patients were thoroughly assessed for psychopathology including SD at baseline and again 5years later. We created a 25-item self-disorder scale which was used both at baseline and follow-up to assess self-disorders. The scale was a pre-cursor of the later published EASE-scale. Additionally, we examined the development of positive and negative syndromes and of the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF).

RESULTS: There was a high correlation between self-disorders at baseline and at follow-up, and the majority of the items in self-disorders scale showed equal proportions between baseline and follow-up.

CONCLUSION: Self-disturbances showed a high level of persistence at 5-year follow-up.