The offspring of parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are more likely to develop the same illness or another psychiatric condition than those with only one parent with a psychiatric condition, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School examined a population-based cohort of 2.7 million individuals born in Denmark and matched records in a general registry of the population with a database of psychiatric admissions. Their findings, which are published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, show rates of schizophrenia were highest among offspring of two parents with schizophrenia. Of the 196 couples who both had schizophrenia, 27.3 per cent of their children were admitted to a psychiatric facility, increasing to 39.2 per cent when schizophrenia-related disorders were included. This compared with a rate of 7 per cent among offspring of couples in which one parent had schizophrenia and 0.86 per cent in 2.2 million offspring of 1 million couples in which neither parent was admitted for schizophrenia. (HealthDay News, 3/02/10)
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