OBJECTIVES: To assemble data on resource use for patients with schizophrenia across several European countries. METHODS: Physicians in 5 European countries who prescribed antipsychotics for ≥15 patients with schizophrenia within the preceding 3 months were invited to complete a questionnaire concerning their patients' clinical status and resource use. Resource use was assessed in terms of frequency of psychiatric hospitalization, length of last completed hospital stay, intensive care unit use, outpatient visits, and number of current medications. RESULTS: Data were obtained from 704 physicians treating 6569 patients from France (n=1492), Germany (n=1439), Italy (n=1003), Spain (n=1310), and the UK (n=1326). Italy (77%), Spain (75%), and Germany (72%) had larger percentages of patients with at least one psychiatric hospitalization in the previous year than did France (56%) and the UK (55%). Mean length of hospital stay varied significantly across countries, from 19.4 days in Italy to 67.5 days in the United Kingdom, and was significantly longer for the subset of patients in whom negative symptoms predominated (n=621; 9.5%) than in the full study population (56.3 vs 50.6 days; P<0.05). Mean number of outpatient visits related to schizophrenia in the previous 12 months ranged from 3.8 in the United Kingdom to 10.8 in France. Mean number of medications per patient ranged from 1.4 in the UK to 1.9 in France. Compared with the entire study population, patients with predominant negative symptoms had more frequent outpatient visits (mean, 8.7 vs 7.9; P<0.05), fewer emergency department visits (mean, 0.5 vs 0.7; P<0.01), and no difference in number of medications taken (mean, 0.9 vs 0.9). CONCLUSIONS: Resource use in this large, retrospective sample of patients varied across countries and with the presence or absence of predominant negative symptoms.