School Performance in Finnish Children and Later Development of Schizophrenia

Abstract

THE ORIGINS of many adult mental disorders can be detected in childhood characteristics,¹ and subtle differences in development and behavior have been found among children who later develop schizophrenia, as far back as prenatal and perinatal life.^2-4 Longitudinal developmental research relies heavily on prospective cohort studies, but this design is not entirely suitable for schizophrenia research because of the low incidence of the illness and the long follow-up period required. One solution is to use cohorts that were set up for other reasons. This "opportunistic" strategy has already produced important results,^5-9 but the major disadvantage is that it yields relatively few cases of schizophrenia with consequent low statistical power.^10,11