IQ and Fertility in Schizophrenia

Abstract

In recent years workers in the area have reached and secured several points of critical importance in the aetiology of schizophrenia. Studies carried out on children bora to schizophrenic mothers but separated from them at birth or in early infancy have established that genetic factors play a major role in the disease (Heston, 1966; Karlsson, 1966; Rosenthal et al., 1968). The index children in these studies become schizophrenic at roughly the same rates (10–15 per cent) as children reared by their schizophrenic mothers and much more commonly than control children separated from non-schizophrenic mothers early in life and placed through the same agencies to comparable foster or adoptive homes.