Genetics, environment and psychopathology / editors, Sarnoff A. Mednick [and others].
- Date:
- 1974
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Genetics, environment and psychopathology / editors, Sarnoff A. Mednick [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
30/364 page 14
![14 Sarnqff A. Mednick and Thomas F. McNeil own reseach [...]? have turned almost completely from the studv of the patient to the longitudinal study of young children at high risk for schizophrenia, children who have chronically and severely schizo¬ phrenic mothers. [• • .] Advantages There are certain methodological advantages in the longitudinal study of high-risk samples. (1) The subjects are not yet schizophrenic; they have not ex¬ perienced the epiphenomena of the illness. Thus, their reactions on our tests are not heavily colored by these epiphenomena. (2) The researchers, relatives, and the subject himself do not know that he will become schizophrenic. This relieves the data of a certain part of the burden of bias. The bias is certainly not greater for the future schizophrenic than for other high-risk subjects who do not succumb to schizophrenia. (3) The information gathered is current, not retrospective. That part of the investigation which is retrospective is less so than it would be if the subjects were adults. (4) The data are uniformly and systematically obtained. This is in contrast to retrospective studies which make use of childhood and school records concerning adult schizophrenics. (5) One advantage of the high-risk-group method which may not be immediately apparent is the fact that the ideal controls for the high-risk subjects who become schizophrenic are the high-risk subjects who develop other deviancies and the high-risk subjects who do not become deviant. (6) There are other samples at high risk for schizophrenia but none of these fulfills the research requirements as well as the children of schizophrenics. Identical twins adult schizophrenics are too old as are siblings and parents of adult schizophrenics. (7) Of the masses of research on the already schizophrenic there is doubtless much which does relate to etiology. Information on pre¬ morbid characteristics may be of value in culling these etiologically relevant findings. In this manner the two methods may be mutually supportive [...].](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18032618_0031.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
