How is schizophrenia transmitted through generations?

Schizophrenia is a psychosis of an endogenous nature, a mental disorder that is particularly severe.

This disease develops under the influence of functional changes occurring in the human body; the influence of environmental factors is not taken into account. Schizophrenia occurs over a fairly long period of time, developing from mild to more severe stages. The changes occurring in the psyche are constantly progressing, as a result of which patients can completely lose any connection with the outside world.

This is a chronic disease that leads to a complete disorder of mental functions and perception, however, it is a mistake to believe that schizophrenia causes dementia, since the patient’s intelligence, as a rule, not only remains at a high level, but can be much higher than that of healthy people. In the same way, memory functions do not suffer; the senses work normally. The problem is that the cerebral cortex does not process incoming information correctly.

Causes

Schizophrenia is inherited - is this true, is this statement worth believing? Are schizophrenia and heredity somehow related? These questions are very relevant in our time. This disease affects about 1.5% of the inhabitants of our planet. There is, of course, a possibility that this pathology can be transmitted from parents to children, but it is extremely small. There is a much greater chance that the child will be born completely healthy.

Moreover, quite often this mental disorder occurs in initially healthy people, in whose family no one has ever had schizophrenia, that is, they do not have a genetic tendency to this disease. In these cases, schizophrenia and heredity are in no way connected, and the development of the disease can be caused by:

• brain injuries - both birth and postpartum;
• serious emotional trauma suffered at an early age;
• environmental factors;
• severe shocks and stress;
• alcohol and drug addiction;
• anomalies of intrauterine development;
• social isolation of the individual.

The causes of this disease themselves are divided into:

• biological (viral infectious diseases suffered by the mother during the process of bearing a child; similar diseases suffered by the child in early childhood; genetic and immune factors; toxic damage from certain substances);
• psychological (until the manifestation of the disease, a person is closed, immersed in his inner world, has difficulty communicating with others, is prone to lengthy reasoning, has difficulty trying to formulate a thought, is characterized by increased sensitivity to stressful situations, is sloppy, passive, stubborn and suspicious, pathological vulnerable);
• social (urbanization, stress, characteristics of family relationships).

5. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

As with other anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder can run in families. But not necessarily for genetic reasons. It may be more like a behavior learned from childhood. OCD is when a person has verbal or behavioral habits that are beyond their control and cause discomfort. Similar to depression and anxiety, a child with a parent with OCD may adopt the same behavior or purposely do the opposite. It can be caused by trauma, but does not have the same genetic basis as bipolar disorder.

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The connection between schizophrenia and heredity

Currently, quite a lot of different studies have been conducted that can confirm the theory that heredity and schizophrenia are closely related concepts. It is safe to say that the likelihood of this mental disorder occurring in children is quite high in the following cases:

• detection of schizophrenia in one of the identical twins (49%);
• diagnosis of the disease in one of the parents or both representatives of the older generation (47%);
• detection of pathology in one of the fraternal twins (17%);
• detection of schizophrenia in one of the parents and at the same time in someone from the older generation (12%);
• detection of the disease in an older brother or sister (9%);
• detection of the disease in one of the parents (6%);
• diagnosing schizophrenia in a nephew or niece (4%);
• manifestations of the disease in aunts, uncles, and cousins ​​(2%).

Thus, we can come to the conclusion that schizophrenia is not necessarily inherited, and the chance of having a healthy child is quite high.

When planning a pregnancy, you should consult a geneticist.

Can schizophrenia be inherited from parents to children?

Schizophrenia is a very serious illness, so many experts are studying in depth the question of whether schizophrenia is inherited. It represents a pronounced mental change that gradually causes complete degradation of a person’s personality. The disease is accompanied by a whole set of signs and symptoms, from which a doctor can make a diagnosis.

The likelihood of inheriting schizophrenia is very high. Many people are confident that it is close to one hundred percent. Both women and men suffer from the disease. Moreover, pathology does not always clearly affect immediate relatives. Sometimes its expanded form is found in grandchildren, nephews or cousins.

Risk factors

It is very important to know exactly how schizophrenia is transmitted from generation to generation. In fact, the genetic factor plays a fairly large role in the transmission of this disease.

Such danger is distributed with a certain frequency.

• If the disorder manifests itself in one baby of twins, then there is about a fifty percent chance that the second child will also suffer from it.
• A slightly lower risk is the circumstance if the disease is diagnosed in a grandfather, grandmother, only in the mother, or only in the father.
• Only one in eighteen people suffers from the disease if the pathology manifests itself in a distant relative.
• One person in fifty is likely to inherit it if an uncle or aunt, as well as cousins, great-uncles or grandmothers, were patients in a psychiatric hospital.

We can say with complete confidence that the person who has been diagnosed with the pathology, both through his parents and the older generation of relatives, will suffer from this type of mental illness.

The probability of developing the disease is close to fifty percent if the mother or father, or both parents, suffered from it. That is, transmission of the disease occurs autosomally.

If only one family member was schizophrenic, all the same, the risk factor for inheriting the gene remains quite high. It’s hard to even guess what percentage it will be. However, in order to judge this circumstance with confidence, it is necessary to undergo a chromosome analysis.

Influence of the male line

It is important to understand whether schizophrenia is most often inherited from the father, since men are often susceptible to this disease.

This happens because:

• representatives of the stronger sex become ill with mental pathology already in childhood or adolescence;
• their disease progresses rapidly;
• it affects their family relationships;
• the impetus for its development may be a not very significant and even acquired factor;
• representatives of the stronger sex more often experience neuropsychic overload, etc.

However, experienced psychiatrists have clearly established that inheriting mental illness from the father is much less common. There is a prejudice about male schizophrenia due to the fact that in the stronger sex the disease occurs in a more severe form.

The main symptoms in men are more developed and vivid. They hallucinate, hear voices, see missing people. Schizophrenics are often very mannered, prone to reasoning, or subject to certain manic ideas.

Some patients completely lose contact with the outside world, stop taking care of themselves, and often suffer from depressive symptoms. Sometimes suicidal tendencies reach the point where a person seeks to commit suicide. If he fails, then most often he immediately becomes a patient in a psychiatric ward.

Men are very often aggressive, constantly drink alcohol, take drugs, and exhibit antisocial behavior.

Male schizophrenics are simply conspicuous, unlike sick women, whose illness is often noticeable only to members of their families.

In addition, representatives of the stronger sex tolerate severe nervous and mental stress much worse, do not seek medical or psychiatric help on time, and often subsequently end up in prison.

Influence of mother and grandmother line

It is equally important to definitely identify the exact probability of transmission of schizophrenia through heredity through the female line.

It is in this case that the risk of disease increases many times. The likelihood of a son or daughter getting the disease from a mother increases at least fivefold. This figure far exceeds the risk level in cases where the pathology is diagnosed in the father of the children.

It is quite difficult to make any definite predictions with complete confidence, since the general mechanism of the development of schizophrenia has not yet been fully studied. However, scientists are inclined to believe that a chromosomal abnormality plays a huge role in the occurrence of the disease.

Not only this pathology, but also many other mental illnesses can pass from mother to children. It is even possible that the woman herself did not suffer from them, but is a carrier of a chromosomal mutation, which caused the development of the disease in children.

A difficult pregnancy, aggravated by toxicosis, can also become a risk factor.

Infectious or respiratory diseases that affect the fetus during gestation also give rise to various diseases.

It is precisely such influences that are responsible for the fact that people who were subsequently diagnosed with this severe mental pathology celebrate their birthday at the very peak of spring or winter infection with viral infections.

The hereditary development of schizophrenia in children is aggravated by:

• very difficult mental conditions of the early development of a daughter or son affected by the disease;
• lack of full care for the child;
• pronounced changes in the baby’s metabolism;
• organic brain damage;
• biochemical pathology, etc.

Therefore, it becomes clear that in order for the disease to be transmitted in an expanded form, a combination of a variety of important factors is required, and not just one hereditary one.

Whether the parents suffered from the disease on the male or female side is very important, but not decisive.

Very often, a woman is affected by schizophrenia in a sluggish form, which goes unnoticed by her family members, medical professionals, or psychiatrists.

Often, a special mutated gene that she happened to inherit from relatives is recessive, without having much of a chance to express itself in its entirety.

The likelihood of developing a disease associated with a chromosomal factor

There is no clear answer to the question of the transmission of schizophrenia from relative to relative.

A genetic disorder or hereditary predisposition are pronounced risk factors, but not a death sentence. Therefore, people who experience this problem should be observed by a psychologist or psychiatrist from early childhood, and should also avoid provoking factors in the development of the disease.

Even when both parents of a child are affected by schizophrenia, the possibility of him developing such a pathology still usually does not exceed a fifty percent probability.

Therefore, until evidence is fully supported by practical and experimental data, one can only speculate about whether schizophrenia is a hereditary disease or not.

Even though there are fairly accurate statistical data that the disease is transmitted along a chromosomal line, it is still very difficult to calculate the degree of its probability.

Many prominent scientists in this field have been engaged in relevant research, but there is no definitive data yet. This is explained by the fact that it is not possible to fully study the mental state and signs of schizophrenia in all relatives of the patient, his absent great-grandparents, or to identify the conditions for the formation and development of a teenager affected by the pathology.

Sometimes the disease can be transmitted from parents to children, but in such a mild form that it can be very difficult to say that a person has schizophrenia.

In cases where parents or children are in a very prosperous environment and do not suffer from any concomitant diseases, sometimes the disease manifests itself in the form of some odd behavior or even almost hidden carriage.

Circumstances of manifestation of pathology in expanded form

In order for schizophrenia to express itself in a generalized form, a combination of factors such as:

• biochemical;
• social;
• nervous;
• psychological;
• chromosomal mutation;
• presence of a dominant gene;
• constitutional characteristics of the patient, etc.

Therefore, making a final conclusion about the likelihood of inheriting schizophrenia should only be done with great caution. However, it is, of course, unacceptable to discount such a factor.

Practicing psychiatrists have long noticed a connection between an ill father or even an uncle and the presence of pathology in a son or nephew.

Moreover, there are cases when both twins were simultaneously affected by such a mental illness.

It should be recognized that schizophrenia is transmitted along a chromosomal line. This conclusion does not raise the slightest doubt. Geneticists and psychiatrists have even proven that female heredity is decisive. However, in order for such a serious and incurable disease to fully come into its own, a combination of many causes and factors is required.

Source: https://vsepromozg.ru/teoriya/shizofreniya-po-nasledstvu

Diagnostic methods

When we talk about genetic diseases, we most often mean illnesses caused by the influence of one specific gene, which is not so difficult to identify, as well as to determine whether it can be transmitted to a future child during the process of conception. If it comes to schizophrenia, then everything is not so simple, since this pathology is transmitted through several different genes at once. Moreover, for each patient, the number of mutated genes is different, as is their variety. The risk of developing schizophrenia directly depends on the number of defective genes.

In no case should one trust the assumption that a hereditary disease is transmitted strictly through generations or only through the male or female line. This is all just guesswork. To date, no researcher knows which gene determines the presence of schizophrenia.

So, hereditary schizophrenia arises as a result of the mutual influence of a group of genes on each other, which develop in a special way and cause a predisposition to the disease.

It is not at all necessary that psychosis will develop, even if defective chromosomes are present in large numbers. Whether a person gets sick or not is influenced by both the quality of his life and the characteristics of the environment. Schizophrenia, inherited, is primarily an innate predisposition to the development of mental disorders that can arise under the influence of various factors due to physiological, psychological and biological reasons.

Bipolar disorder

Mood disorders such as bipolar disorder can also be genetic. People who have relatives with depression or bipolar disorder are at higher risk.

The average person's lifetime chance of developing bipolar disorder is about two to three percent, but the chance increases to 50% when both biological parents have the disorder. Although this does not guarantee a diagnosis, talk to your doctor or someone you trust if you think you may have bipolar disorder.

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Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

A diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can have a lot to do with how you were raised and your behavioral patterns as a child. ADHD in adulthood has the same symptoms as ADHD in children, but it is diagnosed at a later age, which may mean it is a habitual pattern of behavior. If you are having difficulty concentrating and think it may be ADHD, talking to your doctor may help relieve your symptoms.

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Dependencies

Addiction problems—such as alcoholism or gambling—can also be genetic. Alcoholism, drug addiction and addictive behavior often pass from generation to generation. The scientists focused on a region of chromosome 15 that contains several genes involved in the movement of a brain chemical called GABA between neurons. One version of the gene, GABRG3, was found to be statistically associated with alcoholism in addiction-affected families studied.

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