Professor of Adult Psychiatry

Reply to van Os et al. Thank you, Dr. van Os, for bringing the 1995 article by van Os et al. to our attention. This important study describes the results of computer tomography and out-come assessments of 140 subjects with functional psy-chosis of recent onset. It was concluded that dimensions of the sulci and cerebral ventricles are a continuous risk factor for some measures of outcome in functional psy-chosis, which is an important finding. However, our review was designed to specifically investigate outcome in schizophrenia and not the whole spectrum of schizophrenia-like disorders. The main question regarding the article by van Os et al. is whether schizophrenia is a disorder that may be part of a continuous spectrum in the population or a specific disease. Our review was not designed to answer such a question. However, the hypothesis of a continuous spec-trum of psychotic symptoms in the population certainly deserves attention