It's out in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
The authors compared schizophrenia outcomes in 37 countries. They recruited outpatients who were starting, or changing, antipsychotic medication. They found that in terms of "clinical" remission - i.e. improvement in the delusions, hallucinations, and other symptoms of schizophrenia - people in the developing world did indeed fare better than those from rich countries.
Over a 3 year period, 80-85% of patients from East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America who started off ill, showed clinical remission, compared to 60-65% in Europe. That's not new: it confirms what the old WHO data showed.
But the new study also looked at "functional" remission - essentially, being able to participate in society:
having good social functioning for a period of 6 months. Good social functioning included those participants who had: (a) a positive occupational/vocational status, i.e. paid or unpaid full- or part-time employment, being an active student in university or housewife; (b) independent living; and (c) active social interactions, i.e. having more than one social contact during the past 4 weeks or having a spouse or partner.For functional remission, Northern Europe (e.g. the UK, France, Germany) was the best place to get sick, with 35% achieving it. Not a very high figure, but better than elsewhere: it was just 18% in the Middle East and 25% in East Asia, despite these areas having the highest chances of clinical remission. Latin America did pretty well, however, at 29%.
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