The Differential Effect of the Schizophrenic Mother's Stages of Illness on Her Children

¹ Psychiatrist, Kfar-Shaul Government Mental Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel., Visiting Fellow, Department of Medical Genetics, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 722 West 168 Street, New York, U.S.A.
² Department of Psychology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

The research was directed toward two related questions: (a) whether children born at different stages of the schizophrenic mother's illness have a differential probability of normal mental development during childhood; and (b) whether the degree of severity in children that do manifest mental disturbance is influenced by the stage of the mother's disease at the time of birth. Thirty-one families were examined in which the mother had to be hospitalized because of acute schizophrenia. Their 175 children were divided into three groups according to the time of birth in relation to the mother's illness. It was found that the percentage of normals in the children born during the acute period was significantly smaller than the percentage of normals in children born before the onset or in the chronic period. The behaviour disorders of the children within the "acute" group also tended to be more severe than the disturbances of children in the "pre-onset" and " chronic" groups. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in terms of the differential factors in the intra-uterine and in the post-natal environment during the three periods. Several limitations of the study are pointed out, and the necessity for further research in this direction is stressed.

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