Comments | little_details: Children of schizophrenics

serraduchi in little_details

Children of schizophrenics

Jul 02, 2006 16:04

In my latest attempt at a novel, the main male character's mother suffered from schizophrenia to the extent that she hung herself while said character, at five years old, watched. Obviously this experience in and of itself has caused some residual effects, but my real questions are as follows ( Read more... )

~science: biology: genetics, ~psychology & psychiatry: schizophrenia

Comments 12

fatchocobo July 2 2006, 21:04:07 UTC

http://www.schizophrenia.com/ will probably be able to help you out some with the first question, since I'm struggling to remember wether I know the answer or not right now.
As for the second question, you can have psychotic symptoms without actually being skhizophrenic, but I'm not sure what causes there would be aside from the obvious (effects of drug use/witdrawal etc). I'm pretty sure someone told me at some point that long periods of high stress levels can cause some people to have some psychotic symptoms.

phoenixy July 2 2006, 21:08:57 UTC

If I recall correctly from psych class, the probability of a person with one schizophrenic parent being schizophrenic is about 10%.

jody_macgregor July 2 2006, 21:15:02 UTC

It's believed that several genes interact to create a risk of developing schizophrenia, but it's not an area we know a lot about. I've read that a child of a schizophrenic has a 10% chance of being diagnosed with schizophrenia, but it's not a hard and fast thing. We really don't know much about it.

cloudmistress July 2 2006, 21:23:34 UTC

Based on no more research than my family history, schizophrenics can have children that are not schizophrenics. Both of these children, however, have fought/ignored severe depression (at a minimum, not sure about other diagnoses), during their lifetimes. Of the five grandchildren, one is schizophrenic, three have battled and overcome depression at various points in their life, and one seems to have escaped unscathed (so far, anyway).

In summary, the answer to your second question is yes, and I'm not sure about the answer to your first question but I presume that it's plausible that the child of a schizophrenic might suffer from schizophrenia (which usually manifests during the teens or early 20s).

jessisi83 July 2 2006, 21:51:31 UTC

I knew a case of where the father had it (and killed himself) and his son has a bad case of it, then the middle daughter didn't get any problems but the youngest had a mild case ( ... )