Schizophrenia is transmitted by. General information about genetic mutations. Heredity as a cause of the disease

In fact, schizophrenics do not suffer from split personality, it is a completely different disease. Schizophrenia chronic illness associated with mental disorders. Patients with schizophrenia have periods of exacerbation and calm. This disease is accompanied by hearing and visual hallucinations, the patient is delirious, and may experience disturbances in speech. In the world, there are less than 1% of people suffering from this disease. Until now, medicine has not found an exact answer to the question of what causes this disease. How to live with schizophrenia, how to treat it - these questions also do not have clear answers. In this regard, the mysterious disease is shrouded in myths and assumptions.

Beware of schizophrenia, it is contagious!

A number of European and American scientists, conducting research, discovered a molecular trace of a retovirus in a fluid taken from the brain and spinal cord in people suffering from schizophrenia. The study revealed that 30% of patients suffering from acute mental disorders have this retrovirus. And healthy people No traces of the retrovirus could be found. Unlike other viruses, which are made of DNA, retroviruses are made of another genetic material - RNA. Like HIV, the schizophrenia retrovirus can form DNA from its RNA for the purpose of further reproduction. It is almost impossible to stop this process. And if they originate in one person, they can be passed on from generation to generation. From which scientists came to the conclusion that schizophrenia, like others neuropsychiatric disorders are viral diseases.

The newspaper “Arguments and Facts” in issue 38 of September 21, 2005 published an article about the famous psychiatrist, Doctor of Medical Sciences Etelius Kazanets. Ethelius argues that schizophrenia is as easy to contract as any other infection. Simple everyday contact is enough. Back in 70, when Kazanets worked at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Health, he heard about a girl who, living in communal apartment, contracted schizophrenia from her friend. Ethelius became interested in this fact and began research. I conducted statistics on 40 houses and got an unexpected result. About 10% of people living with people with schizophrenia also became susceptible to this disease. He derived a pattern that infection depends on the proximity and frequency of communication with the patient. Kazanets considered adolescents to be most susceptible to this disease during their puberty. Ethelius read out his sensational discovery at the capital's forum, and then published it in the foreign press. Representatives of the medical community reacted with hostility to his statement, and as a result, Kazanets’s career in Russia was over. He was fired from the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry named after. Serbian. After that, he lived in Russia for another 10 years, studying private practice, and then immigrated to the USA.

Another opinion:

In 2001, the RBC newspaper published an opinion on this topic by doctor of medical sciences, neuropsychologist Evgeniy Shaposhnikov. Neuropsychologist says there's really strong evidence viral nature no schizophrenia. Schizophrenia refers to internal diseases psyche. The reasons for its occurrence are not known. There is some risk of a hereditary predisposition to this disease. The same as in patients with diabetes mellitus or cancer. But this does not mean at all that a woman with schizophrenia will necessarily give birth to a child prone to this illness. He explains the effect of the contagiousness of this disease with the following argument. If you are sick, suffering obsessions, persecution mania, etc., is constantly in contact with his loved ones, he tells them about it all the time and, as a result, can convince them of the reality of the threat. Close people become infected not with schizophrenia, but with its symptom, i.e. with the thoughts of a schizophrenic, they begin to believe what he says.

Other doctors agree that a virus can cause schizophrenia, but reject the fact that the disease is contagious. And they present a fairly compelling argument. If this disease were contagious, then all doctors treating schizophrenics would have long ago become infected with this disease. They name the causes of the disease: hormonal disorder, disruption of brain function, long-term traumatic circumstances.

The opinion of ordinary people:

What can we say about the opinion of ordinary people about this disease, if even medical experts have not come to a consensus. Several myths have formed among ordinary people about this incompletely studied disease.
There is an opinion that you can become schizophrenic as a result of abuse in childhood. Actually this is not true. Poor treatment can only speed up the process in a child predisposed to the disease or aggravate the disease.

The idea that people with schizophrenia are aggressive is also a misconception. Aggression itself is not associated with this disease. It’s easier to say that if a person is aggressive in life, then during periods of exacerbation of schizophrenia he will be so, and if he is calm by nature, then schizophrenia will not make him aggressive. But one should still take into account the fact that these people still pose some danger. During the period of exacerbation of the disease, they can cause harm to others even with good intentions. For example, they will want to destroy something in order to escape from alleged pursuers, etc. In addition, such people are very at risk of becoming addicted to drugs or alcoholism. Which in turn shortens their life.

Some believe that a person can develop schizophrenia after committing some unfavorable act. And as a result of a strong experience, become schizophrenic. This is also a mistaken opinion.

All schizophrenics are geniuses. There is also such an opinion. Indeed, the brain of geniuses works with greater efficiency than the brain of an ordinary person. Perhaps for this reason, many geniuses may experience mental disorders. But this does not mean that all patients with schizophrenia are necessarily geniuses.

Is there a cure for schizophrenia?

Some people believe that people with schizophrenia are simply mentally weak and therefore cannot cope with their illness. But schizophrenia is the same disease as, for example, deafness. A person who is hard of hearing cannot begin to hear better just by an effort of his will. Most schizophrenics are aware of their illness and strive to get rid of it. Of course, to understand the disease they need the support and understanding of people close to them. After all, a schizophrenic still needs to believe in the fact that part of the world that they hear and see is unreal.

But the truth is that at the moment there is no medicine that would completely cure a patient with schizophrenia. There are only remedies that, to one degree or another, can relieve or reduce the symptoms of the disease. Thus, they can improve the quality of life of the patient and his loved ones. But such drugs usually have negative side effects.

But still, even a person with schizophrenia can defeat this disease!

And there is practical confirmation of this. The great mathematician and genius who received the Nobel Prize was a schizophrenic. He could not recover from this illness, but he managed to deceive his illness. About this real story A wonderful feature film “A Beautiful Mind” was shot.

And if you are interested in a topic where a person, despite any life circumstances, sometimes from a seemingly absolutely hopeless situation, finds a way to victory, you can go to our “We recommend films” section and check out our rating of films dedicated to the topic : Everything is possible !

Or go to any section and find the topic “Success Stories” and read others amazing stories victories

Schizophrenia is considered as a severe mental disorder of personality, related to psychoses of an endogenous nature.

In other words, the development of this disease is associated not so much with exposure to any external factors, how many with functional changes in the body. Positive and negative signs of pathology arise on their own and are not the primary reaction to external stimuli. Progressive personality changes lead to the loss of communication between patients and real world. The disease progresses long time, moving from mild to more severe stages of development.

Schizophrenia - chronic illness, which upsets the functions of thinking and perception. At the same time, pathology cannot be considered dementia, since the intelligence of sick people can be maintained for a sufficiently long time. high level, as in completely healthy representatives of humanity. During the course of this disease, memory, sensory organs and brain activity are not impaired. Schizophrenics see, hear and feel everything the same as those around them. But the incoming information is incorrectly processed by the cerebral cortex, that is, by consciousness.

Why does this personality disorder occur and what factors are involved in the etiology of the disease? Is schizophrenia inherited? main question, which will be discussed in this article.

Etiology

Considering that today 1.5% of the population suffers from schizophrenia, the heredity of the disease remains a pressing topic for many. Young couples with relatives in their family similar diagnosis, fear for the health of future heirs and often hesitate to have children. The opinion that schizophrenia is necessarily transmitted along a family line is somewhat erroneous. There is a high probability that even in a family where one of the parents is sick, the child can be born completely healthy.

In addition, mental personality disorder often occurs in healthy people who do not have a genetic predisposition to pathology. In such cases, there are non-hereditary etiological factors, and reasons such as:

generic and postpartum trauma brain;
emotional trauma received in early age;
environmental factors;
severe stress and shock;
alcoholism and drug addiction;
abnormal intrauterine development;
social isolation.

Genetic factor

Despite the fact that to date no conclusive evidence has been found of the genetic origin of schizophrenia, numerous studies have partially confirmed this hypothesis. The following data were obtained on the degree of risk (probability) of development mental pathology in children:

As we see, it is impossible to say unequivocally that children will definitely inherit the disease from close and distant relatives. The probability of giving birth to an absolutely healthy baby is very high and you should not immediately panic and give up the opportunity to become parents. A consultation with a geneticist will help dispel doubts when planning a pregnancy.

Quite often there are situations when parents find out about the presence of schizophrenics in their family after the birth of the child. This fact forces mother and father to look closely at their child every day, looking for symptoms of mental disorders. The behavior of the son or daughter begins to seem strange, and any non-standard reaction of the child causes panic and fear in the parents. This attitude can cause mental disorders even in absolutely healthy children, so in no case should you wind yourself up ahead of time. It is better to contact a specialist and conduct the necessary examination.

Most people are interested in the question of how one can determine in advance whether schizophrenia is inherited? Unfortunately, it is impossible to accurately determine the degree of risk of developing the disease in future children. Let us consider in more detail what determines the complexity of diagnosing mental pathology.

Diagnostics

When a disease is associated with the influence of one specific gene, then identifying its presence is not difficult, as is establishing the likelihood of transmission along the hereditary line when conceiving a child. In such situations, already during the period intrauterine development it is possible to carry out diagnostics and determine whether the defective gene is passed on to the fetus or not.

In the case of schizophrenia, everything is much more complicated, since the transmission of pathology is carried out not by one, but by several different genes at once. That is, the disease is not transmitted from parents to baby, like eye color or hair color. The problem is that each schizophrenic has a different number of defective mutation genes and their type.

Only one thing can be said for sure - the more defective genes, the higher the risk of schizophrenia.

However, it is important to take into account the fact that the defective chromosome has an impact on the brain and its development in particular. For example, when chromosome 16 is defective, the probability of developing a disease increases 8 times, and when the defective gene is on chromosome 3, the risk of disease increases 16 times.

Therefore, you should not believe information that schizophrenia is inherited through generations or only through the female (male) line. No one knows this for certain, since the set of chromosomes in each person cannot be predicted before his birth. And even scientists do not know exactly which gene should be looked for to determine the presence of schizophrenia.

Hereditary schizophrenia is difficult to diagnose due to the fact that it has mild symptoms compared to a disease that is not genetically determined. Usually, accurate diagnosis Patients can only be diagnosed several years after the first signs of a personality disorder appear.

When making a diagnosis, the leading role is given to assessing the psychological state of patients and studying the pathological manifestations present.

Conclusion

It is believed that hereditary schizophrenia is the result of the interaction of a group of genes folded in a certain way and causing a predisposition to the disease.

However, even in the presence of a large number of defective chromosomes, endogenous psychosis may not develop. The occurrence of the disease depends to some extent on the person’s quality of life and characteristics environment.

From all that has been said above, we can conclude that hereditary schizophrenia is simply an innate predisposition to the development mental disorders, which may subsequently arise due to the influence of physiological, biological and mental factors!

The process of studying the causes of schizophrenia has been ongoing for more than a century, but not a single specific one has been discovered. causative factor and no unified theory of the development of the disease has been developed. Today, the therapies available in the medical arsenal can alleviate many of the symptoms of the disease, but in most cases, patients are forced to live with residual symptoms for the rest of their lives. Scientists from around the world are developing more effective medicines and use the latest and most modern instruments and research methods to find the cause of the disease.

Causes of the disease

Schizophrenia is a severe chronic mental disorder leading to disability and known to mankind throughout its historical development.

Since the cause of the disease has not been precisely established, it is difficult to say for sure whether schizophrenia is a hereditary or acquired disease. There are research results that indicate that schizophrenia is inherited in a certain percentage of cases.

Today, the disease is regarded as a multifactorial disease caused by the interaction of endogenous (internal) and exogenous (external or environmental) causes. That is, heredity (genetic factors) alone is not enough for the development of this mental disorder, you also need the effect of environmental factors on the body. This is the so-called epigenetic theory of the development of schizophrenia.

The diagram below shows the probable process of development of schizophrenia.

There may not be factors of brain damage, including neuroinfection, for schizophrenia to develop

Heredity and schizophrenia

Human genes are localized on 23 pairs of chromosomes. The latter are located in the nucleus of every human cell. Each person inherits two copies of each gene, one from each parent. It is believed that some genes are associated with increased risk development of the disease. Given the presence of genetic prerequisites, according to scientists, it is unlikely that genes themselves can cause the development of the disease. To date, it is still impossible to accurately predict who will get the disease based on genetic testing.

It is known that the age of parents (over 35 years) plays an important role in the development of not only schizophrenia, but also other diseases associated with genome damage. This is explained by the fact that gene defects accumulate with age, and this can affect the health of the unborn child.

According to statistics, this disease affects about 1% of the adult population. It has been found that people whose immediate family members (a parent, sibling) or second-degree relatives (aunts, uncles, grandparents, or cousins) have schizophrenia have a much higher risk of developing the disease than others. of people. In a pair of identical twins, where one has schizophrenia, the second has the highest risk of developing the disease: 40-65%.

Men and women have the same opportunity to develop this psychological illness throughout their entire life. Although the disease begins much earlier in men than in women.

One study found that the likelihood of developing schizophrenia among various groups population is different:

general population (no sick relatives) - 1%;
children (one parent is sick) - 12%;
children (both parents are sick) - 35-46%;
grandchildren (if grandparents are sick) - 5%;
siblings (sisters or brothers are sick) - up to 12%;
fraternal twins (one of the twins is sick) - 9-26%;
identical twins (one of the twins is sick) - 35-45%.

That is, the predisposition to this mental illness is transmitted from grandfather/grandmother to grandson than from father/mother to son or daughter.

If the mother in a family has schizophrenia, then the children are more likely to get sick this pathology is 5 times higher than if was father is sick. Thus, schizophrenia is female line transmitted much more often than from father to child.

People suffering from mental illnesses and disorders are not uncommon. Inadequate thinking processes, incoherent thoughts, hallucinations - frequent companions such diseases.

From time immemorial, many generations have been interested in the role of heredity in mental illness. It was not uncommon to have discussions among friends about the oddities of this or that person, where facts of inappropriate behavior and disorders in one of his relatives surfaced. The thing is that in the case of a marriage with a young lady or gentleman whose family had relatives suffering from mental illness, there was a risk of mental disorders in the children born - their descendants.

This problem is still relevant today. One of the most common is schizophrenia. A disease that equally affects both males and females. Women - in later age category and to a less severe extent. At least 1% of the world's inhabitants suffer from the disease. The disease also affects children. And it’s no wonder that many people directly related to this type of disorder are concerned about the question: is schizophrenia inherited?

Young people getting married, one of whom suffers from the disorder, and their relatives and friends turn to psychiatrists for answers, hoping to dispel their doubts about the possibility of manifestations of schizophrenia in their expected offspring.

On various forums, both among interested parties, their environment, and among medical specialists, a problem is being raised - schizophrenia: is it inherited?

Many sources on mental disorders highlight several causes of this disease.

The data from numerous studies in the field of schizophrenia are mixed. The mechanisms are currently being extensively studied of this disease. Conducted diagnostic studies sick people, and of various categories, are put forward different versions, symptoms are interpreted, conclusions are drawn. The results of most studies still confirm the fact that schizophrenia is inherited. The number of children affected in families with parents suffering from the disorder is quite significant and can be, according to some trials, up to 20%. The risk of diseases is most likely in children, as well as adults, in families where their parents, siblings and brothers, that is, direct relatives, are sick. The risk of morbidity among twins is very high. This cannot be ignored by researchers and confirms the fact that this disorder is highly hereditary. However, some tests conducted, nevertheless, cast doubt on this factor, motivating their conclusions by the fact that a large number of people get sick without having among their relatives those affected by this disease. Not long ago, researchers from (United States of America) expressed their doubts and made assumptions in this area.

IN Lately researchers who have asked and are interested in the problem: “is schizophrenia inherited or not” are more inclined to the influence of the environment, including those suffering from this disease, on the development of the disease in a person. Pointing out in his tests the importance of the environment in which the person suffering from the disease grew up, and the degree to which he was raised by a sick relative.

However, no clear conclusions have been made to date to deny the heredity factor in the development of the disease. This does not allow us to fully refute the theory that schizophrenia is inherited.

The disease cannot be cured, and such a patient often becomes a big burden and problem for loved ones.

Many people who have relatives with this type of disorder fear for the health of future generations, and fear that unfavorable conditions the disease did not find its manifestation in them themselves.

Such thoughts and fears are not completely unfounded, since since ancient times it has become known that if there is at least one crazy person in the family, then the deviation will sooner or later manifest itself in the form of mental pathology in children or grandchildren.

Such a family was usually bypassed, and marrying into its members was tantamount to a curse. Many in those days believed that God was punishing an entire family for the sins of their ancestors and taking away a person’s reason.

Nowadays, no one believes in this, but many consider entering into such a marriage very undesirable. For this reason, information about a relative who suffers from a mental disorder is usually carefully hidden.

However, only specialists can make predictions about the likelihood of a baby having such deviations.

Causes of schizophrenia

The likelihood of getting sick can be noted not only as a result of a burdened seminal history; the trigger for schizophrenia can be:

maternal fasting during pregnancy;
emotional and physical trauma suffered by the child during childhood;
birth injury;
poor environmental conditions;
drug and alcohol use;
social isolation;
intrauterine development disorder.

Who is more likely to get sick?

Many people, completely unreasonably, believe that the disease occurs as a result of:

only hereditary factor;
transmitted through generations, that is, from grandfathers to grandchildren;
presence of patients female(that is, schizophrenia is transmitted through the female line);
the presence of men suffering from schizophrenia (only from man to man).

In fact, such statements are devoid of any scientific basis. The risk of the disease equal to one percent remains in people with completely normal heredity.

How is schizophrenia actually transmitted? The likelihood becomes slightly higher if you have sick relatives. If the family has cousins or sisters, as well as aunts and uncles with an officially confirmed diagnosis, then we're talking about about the possible development of the disease in two percent of cases.

If a half-brother or sister has pathology, the probability increases to six percent. The same numbers can be cited when it comes to parents.

The most high probability The development of the disease occurs in those individuals who have sick not only a mother or father, but also a grandmother or grandfather. If a deviation is detected in fraternal twins, the possibility of developing schizophrenia in the second reaches seventeen percent.

Probability of birth healthy child, even in the presence of a sick relative, is quite high. Therefore, you should not deny yourself the happiness of becoming parents. But in order not to take risks, you should consult a geneticist.

The highest probability, almost 50%, occurs when one of the parents and both representatives of the older generation - grandparents - are sick.

The same percentage is the possibility of developing the disease in an identical twin when schizophrenia is diagnosed in the second.

Despite the fact that the probability of illness in the presence of several patients in the family remains quite high, these are still not the most terrible indicators.

If we compare the data with a hereditary predisposition to oncological diseases or diabetes mellitus, then you can understand that they are still much lower.

Features of the examination

For various hereditary pathologies, the study does not constitute special labor. This happens because a specific gene is responsible for the development of a particular disease.

In schizophrenia, this is difficult to do, since this occurs at the level of different genes, and in each patient completely different mutations may be responsible for this.

Experts note that, according to their observations, the degree of likelihood of mental disorders in a child depends on the number of altered genes. For this reason, one should not believe stories that the disease is transmitted through the male or female line.

In fact even experienced specialists cannot know which gene is responsible for schizophrenia in each specific case.

Most types of mental disorders develop quite slowly, and the diagnosis is made several years after the appearance of the first nonspecific symptoms.

Exercise from psychological test for schizophrenia

conclusions

We can safely say that the hereditary form of schizophrenia develops as a result of the general interaction of several genes, which, when combined, cause a predisposition to this pathology.

But even the presence of damaged and altered chromosomes cannot speak of a 100% probability of developing the disease. If a person has had it since childhood normal conditions the disease may never manifest itself in life.

Schizophrenia is a hereditary disease, methods of diagnosis and treatment

Broadcast mental illness by inheritance is not an idle question. Everyone wants themselves, their loved ones and their children to be healthy physically and mentally.

What should you do if among your relatives or the relatives of your significant other there are patients with schizophrenia?

There was a time when there was talk that scientists had found 72 genes for schizophrenia. Several years have passed since then and the research data have not been confirmed.

Although schizophrenia is considered a genetically determined disease, structural changes in certain genes have not been found. A set of defective genes has been identified that disrupt brain function, but it cannot be said that this leads to the development of schizophrenia. That is, it is not possible, after spending genetic testing, to say whether a person will get schizophrenia or not.

Although there is a hereditary condition for the disease of schizophrenia, the disease develops from a complex of factors: sick relatives, the character of the parents and their attitude towards the child, upbringing in early childhood.

Since the origin of the disease is unknown, medical scientists have identified several hypotheses for the occurrence of schizophrenia:

Genetic - in twin children, as well as in families where parents suffer from schizophrenia, more frequent manifestations of the disease are observed.
Dopamine: human mental activity depends on the production and interaction of the main mediators, serotonin, dopamine and melatonin. In schizophrenia, there is increased stimulation of dopamine receptors in the limbic region of the brain. However, this causes the manifestation of productive symptoms, in the form of delusions and hallucinations, and does not in any way affect the development of negative symptoms - apatho-abulic syndrome: decreased will and emotions. ;
Constitutional is a set of psychophysiological characteristics of a person: gynecomorphic men and pyknic-type women are most often found among patients with schizophrenia. Patients with morphological dysplasia are considered to be less responsive to treatment.
The infectious theory of the origin of schizophrenia is currently of more historical interest than it has any basis. Previously it was believed that staphylococcus, streptococcus, tuberculosis and E. coli, as well as chronic viral diseases reduce human immunity, which is supposedly one of the factors in the development of schizophrenia.
Neurogenetic: a mismatch between the work of the right and left hemispheres due to a defect in the corpus callosum, as well as a violation of the fronto-cerebellar connections leads to the development of productive manifestations of the disease.
Psychoanalytic theory explains the appearance of schizophrenia in families with a cold and cruel mother, an oppressive father, and absence warm relations among family members, or their manifestation of opposite emotions to the same behavior of the child.
Ecological – mutagenic influence of unfavorable environmental factors and lack of vitamins during fetal development.
Evolutionary: increasing the intelligence of people and increasing technocratic development in society.

The likelihood of developing schizophrenia

The probability of developing schizophrenia in persons who do not have a sick relative is 1%. And for a person with a family history of schizophrenia, this percentage is distributed as follows:

one of the parents is sick - the risk of getting sick will be 6%,
father or mother is sick, as well as grandparents - 3%,
a brother or sister suffers from schizophrenia – 9%,
either the grandfather or grandmother is sick - the risk is 5%,
when you got sick cousin(brother) or aunt (uncle), then the risk of disease is 2%,
if only the nephew is sick, the probability of schizophrenia will be 6%.

This percentage only indicates possible risk schizophrenia, but does not guarantee its manifestation. As you go, the largest percentage is when parents and grandparents suffered from schizophrenia. Fortunately, this combination is quite rare.

Schizophrenia is hereditary in the female or male line

A reasonable question arises: if schizophrenia is a genetically dependent disease, is it transmitted through the maternal or paternal line? According to the observations of practicing psychiatrists, as well as statistics from medical scientists, such a pattern has not been identified. That is, the disease is transmitted equally through both the female and male lines.

Moreover, it more often manifests itself under the influence of combined factors: hereditary and constitutional characteristics, pathology during pregnancy and the development of the child in perinatal period, as well as the peculiarities of upbringing in childhood. Chronic and severe acute stress, as well as alcoholism and drug addiction can be provoking factors for the manifestation of schizophrenia.

Hereditary schizophrenia

Because real reasons The occurrence of schizophrenia is not known and not one of the theories of schizophrenia fully explains its manifestations - doctors are inclined to attribute the disease to hereditary diseases.

If one of the parents has schizophrenia or there are known cases of the disease among other relatives, before planning a child, such parents are advised to consult a psychiatrist and geneticist. An examination is carried out, the probabilistic risk is calculated and the most favorable period for pregnancy.

We help patients not only with inpatient treatment, but also try to provide further outpatient and socio-psychological rehabilitation, telephone number of the Preobrazhenie clinic.

Find out what they say

about our professionals

I would like to thank the wonderful doctor Dmitry Vladimirovich Samokhin for his professionalism and attentive attitude! My health has become much better! Thank you very much! Also, special thanks to the staff of the outpatient clinic!

Thank you very much to all the staff for your care and attention. Many thanks to the doctors for good treatment. Separately, Inna Valerievna, Bagrat Rubenovich, Sergei Alexandrovich, Mikhail Petrovich. Thank you for your understanding, patience and professionalism. I am very glad that I was treated here.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to your clinic! Note the professionalism of both doctors and junior nurses. staff! They brought me to you “half-bent” and “with a stone on my soul.” And I leave with a confident gait and a joyful mood. Special thanks to the “kitchen” attending doctors M.E. Baklushev, I.V. Babina, m/s Gala, procedural m/s Elena, Oksana. Also thanks to the wonderful psychologist Yulia! And also to all doctors on duty.

"Preobrazhenie Clinic": the strongest psychiatric center in Moscow. For you: good psychotherapists, consultations with psychiatrists, psychologists and other psychiatric help.

Psychiatric “Transfiguration Clinic” ©18

Is schizophrenia inherited?

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

This disease develops under the influence functional changes occurring in the human body, the impact of factors external environment 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 by 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 different hypersensitivity to stressful situations, sloppy, passive, stubborn and suspicious, pathologically vulnerable);
social (urbanization, stress, characteristics of family relationships).

The connection between schizophrenia and heredity

Currently, quite a lot has been done various studies, capable of confirming 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, as well as cousins or sisters (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.

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 quantities. 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.

Is the schizophrenia gene passed on to children?

The existence of genetic factors in the occurrence of schizophrenia is beyond doubt, but not in the sense of certain carrier genes.

Schizophrenia is inherited only when life path personality, its fate prepares a kind of soil for the development of the disease.

Unsuccessful love, life's misfortunes and psycho-emotional traumas lead to a person moving away from unbearable reality into the world of dreams and fantasies.

Read about the symptoms of the hebephrenic form of schizophrenia in our article.

What kind of disease is this?

Schizophrenia is a chronic progressive disease that includes a complex of psychoses that arise as a result internal reasons not associated with somatic diseases (brain tumor, alcoholism, drug addiction, encephalitis, etc.).

As a result of the disease, pathological change individuals with mental disorders, expressed by the following symptoms:

Gradual loss of social contacts, leading to isolation of the patient.
Emotional impoverishment.
Thinking disorders: empty, fruitless verbosity, judgments devoid of common sense, symbolism.
Internal contradictions. Mental processes, occurring in the patient’s consciousness, are divided into “his own” and external, that is, those that do not belong to him.

Associated symptoms include the appearance of delusional ideas, hallucinatory and illusory disorders, and depressive syndrome.

The course of schizophrenia is characterized by two phases: acute and chronic. In the chronic stage, patients become apathetic: mentally and physically devastated. The acute phase is characterized by pronounced mental syndrome, which includes a complex of symptom-phenomena:

the ability to hear one's own thoughts;
voices commenting on the patient’s actions;
perception of voices in the form of dialogue;
own aspirations are realized under external influence;
experiences of impact on your body;
someone takes away his thoughts from the patient;
others can read the patient's thoughts.

Schizophrenia is diagnosed if the patient has a combination of manic symptoms depressive disorders, paranoid and hallucinatory symptoms.

Who can get sick?

The disease can begin at any age, however, most often the onset of schizophrenia occurs at the age of 20–25 years.

According to statistics, the incidence is the same in men and women, but in males the disease develops much earlier and can begin in adolescence.

In females, the disease is more acute and is expressed by vivid, affective symptoms.

According to statistics, 2% of the world's population suffers from schizophrenia. There is currently no unified theory of the cause of the disease.

Congenital or acquired?

Is this disease hereditary or not? To this day there is no single theory of the origin of schizophrenia.

Researchers have put forward many hypotheses about the mechanism of development of the disease, and each of them has its own confirmation, however, none of these concepts fully explains the origin of the disease.

Among the many theories of the origin of schizophrenia are:

The role of heredity. A family predisposition to schizophrenia has been scientifically proven. However, in 20% of cases the disease first appears in a family in which hereditary burden has not been proven.
Neurological factors. Patients with schizophrenia have been identified various pathologies central nervous system caused by damage to brain tissue by autoimmune or toxic processes in the perinatal period or in the first years of life. Interestingly, similar central nervous system disorders were found in mentally healthy relatives of a patient with schizophrenia.

Thus, it has been proven that schizophrenia is predominantly a genetic disease associated with various neurochemical and neuroanatomical lesions of the nervous system.

However, “activation” of the disease occurs under the influence of internal and environmental factors:

psycho-emotional trauma;
family dynamic aspects: incorrect distribution of roles, overprotective mother, etc.;
cognitive impairment (impaired attention, memory);
impairment of social interaction;

Based on the above, we can conclude that schizophrenia is a multifactorial disease of a polygenic nature. In this case, the genetic predisposition in a certain patient is realized only through the interaction of internal and external factors.

How to distinguish sluggish schizophrenia from neurosis? Find out the answer right now.

Which gene is responsible for the disease?

Several decades ago, scientists tried to identify the gene responsible for schizophrenia. The dopamine hypothesis has been widely promoted, suggesting dysregulation of dopamine in patients. However, this theory has been scientifically refuted.

Today, researchers are inclined to believe that the basis of the disease is a violation of the impulse transmission of many genes.

Inheritance - male or female?

There is an opinion that schizophrenia is transmitted more often through the male line. These conclusions are based on the mechanisms of manifestation of the disease:

In men, the disease manifests itself at an earlier age than in women. Sometimes the first manifestations of schizophrenia in women can begin only during menopause.
Schizophrenia in a genetic carrier manifests itself under the influence of some trigger mechanism. Men experience psycho-emotional trauma much more deeply than women, which causes them to develop the disease more often.

In fact, if a mother in a family has schizophrenia, then children get sick 5 times more often than if the father was sick.

Statistical data on the presence of genetic predisposition

Genetic studies have proven the role of heredity in the development of schizophrenia.

If the disease is present in both parents, then the risk of the disease is 50%.

If one of the parents has the disease, the probability of its occurrence in the child is reduced to 5–10%.

Studies using the twin method have shown that the probability of inheriting the disease in both identical twins is 50%, in fraternal twins this figure decreases to 13%.

To a greater extent, what is inherited is not schizophrenia itself, but a predisposition to the disease, the implementation of which depends on many factors, including trigger mechanisms.

Testing for multiple personality disorder can be taken on our website.

How to find out the probability in your family?

The risk of developing schizophrenia in a person with unaffected genetics is 1%. If one of the parents is sick in the family, then the probability of inheritance is 5–10%.

If the disease manifests itself in the mother, then the risk of the disease increases significantly, especially in a male child.

The chance of developing the disease is 50% if both parents are affected. If there were grandparents with schizophrenia in the family, then the risk of the disease for a grandson is 5%.

If the disease is detected in siblings, the likelihood of schizophrenia will be 6–12%.

Through what line is schizophrenia transmitted? Find out about it in the video:

How is inherited - diagram

The likelihood of inheriting schizophrenia from relatives depends on the degree of relationship.

probability of illness - 50%

probability of illness – 5%

A family history can sometimes manifest itself as personality changes, cognitive impairment, or light forms diseases.

What is child cognitive development? Find out about this from our article.

At what age can a child be diagnosed?

Schizophrenia in a child whose parents are sick can begin at any age.

Canadian psychiatrists admit the possibility of the onset of the disease in children under 3 years of age.

However, according to the results of many studies, the disease was diagnosed in children no earlier than 5 years of age.

Childhood schizophrenia is expressed by the following symptoms:

fear;
sadness;
cognitive decline;
speech disorder;
sleep and appetite disorders;
retardation in height and weight.

In younger children school age There are disturbances in communication with peers, emotional impoverishment, a state of excitement, and lethargy of motives.

Many researchers identify disruption of the relationship between mother and child and other family aspects as a trigger in the development of the disease in children.

Special clinical and genetic studies of families of children with schizophrenia revealed that in 70% of cases the parents had schizoid symptoms.

A psychiatrist talks about the causes of schizophrenia in children:

Can it be avoided?

A burdened heredity does not necessarily imply the development of the disease. A person who has relatives with schizophrenia does not need to fear for their health and focus on the possible development of the disease.

As preventive measures you should:

News healthy image life, refuse and not drink alcoholic beverages and other drugs at all.
Share experiences and others emotional disorders with an experienced psychologist to avoid the development of apathy.
Devote more time to sports and exercise active species activities.

It is important to develop in yourself right attitude to life. You should not fall into despair when faced with any problems and experience various failures alone. You should approach problems calmly and judiciously, or solve difficulties together with a psychologist.

What methods does cognitive behavioral therapy include? Read about it here.

What to do if a diagnosis of schizophrenia is made during pregnancy? About this in the video:

There are no articles on a similar topic.

Using the example of my relatives, I can say that yes, schizophrenia is transmitted, and through the father to both children. But one child took his condition to the extreme - he became an alcoholic, completely isolated himself from people, and the other, despite life's hardships, found in himself common sense and was able to rehabilitate himself in society. And what’s interesting is that schizophrenics often pair up with others like themselves, aggravating the heredity of future generations.

Is schizophrenia hereditary or not?

Schizophrenia is a well-known mental illness. Several tens of millions of people worldwide suffer from this disease. Among the main hypotheses for the occurrence of the disease, particularly close attention is drawn to the question: can schizophrenia be inherited?

Heredity as a cause of the disease

Concern about whether schizophrenia is inherited is quite justified for people in whose families cases of the disease have been recorded. Also, possible bad heredity is a concern when getting married and planning offspring.

After all, this diagnosis means serious mental disturbances (the word “schizophrenia” itself is translated as “split consciousness”): delusions, hallucinations, motor impairment, manifestations of autism. A sick person becomes unable to think adequately, communicate with others and needs psychiatric treatment.

The first studies of the familial spread of the disease were carried out back in the centuries. For example, in the clinic of the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, one of the founders of modern psychiatry, large groups of schizophrenic patients were studied. The works of the American professor of medicine I. Gottesman, who studied this topic, are also interesting.

There were initially a number of difficulties in confirming the “family theory”. To reliably determine whether a disease is genetic or not, it was necessary to recreate full picture illnesses in the human race. But many patients simply could not reliably confirm the presence or absence of mental disorders in their family.

Perhaps some of the patients’ relatives knew about the clouding of their minds, but these facts were often carefully hidden. Severe psychotic illness in relatives imposed a social stigma on the entire family. Therefore, such stories were hushed up both for descendants and for doctors. Often, ties between a sick person and his relatives were completely severed.

And yet, the family sequence in the etiology of the disease was traced very clearly. Although doctors, fortunately, do not give an unequivocally affirmative answer that schizophrenia is necessarily inherited. But genetic predisposition is among the main causes of this mental disorder.

Statistics of the “genetic theory”

To date, psychiatry has accumulated enough information to come to certain conclusions on the question of how schizophrenia is inherited.

Medical statistics say that if your family line If there is no clouding of reason and there never was, then your probability of getting sick is no more than 1%. However, if your relatives did have such diseases, then the risk increases accordingly and ranges from 2 to almost 50%.

The most high performance recorded in pairs of identical (monozygotic) twins. They have completely identical genes. If one of them gets sick, then the second has a 48% risk of developing pathology.

Much attention from the medical community was attracted by a case described in works on psychiatry (monograph by D. Rosenthal et al.) back in the 70s of the 20th century. The father of four identical twin girls suffered mental disorders. The girls developed normally, studied and communicated with peers. One of them did not graduate educational institution, but three completed their schooling successfully. However, at the age of 20 – 23 years schizoid disorders All the sisters began to develop a sense of reason. The most severe form is catatonic (with characteristic symptoms in the form of psychomotor disorders) was recorded in a girl who had not completed school. Of course, in similar bright cases Psychiatrists simply have no doubt whether this is a hereditary disease or an acquired one.

A descendant has a 46% chance of getting sick if one of the parents (or mother, or father) is sick in his family, but both grandparents are sick. Genetic disease in the family in this case it is also actually confirmed. A person who had both a father and mother with mental illness in the absence of similar diagnoses among their parents would have a similar percentage of risk. Here it is also quite easy to see that the patient’s illness is hereditary and not acquired.

If in a pair of fraternal twins one of them has a pathology, then the risk of the second getting sick will be 15-17%. This difference between identical and fraternal twins is associated with the same genetic makeup in the first case, and a different one in the second.

A person with one patient in the first or second generation of the family has a 13% chance. For example, the likelihood of a disease occurring is transmitted from the mother when healthy father. Or vice versa - from the father, while the mother is healthy. Option: both parents are healthy, but one of the grandparents is mentally ill.

9%, if your sibling fell victim to a mental illness, but no other similar abnormalities were found in the closest relatives.

From 2 to 6% the risk will be for someone in whose family there is only one case of pathology: one of your parents, step-brother or sister, uncle or aunt, one of the nephews, etc.

Note! Even a 50% probability is not a verdict, not 100%. So don't take it too personally folk myths about the inevitability of transmission of diseased genes “through a generation” or “from generation to generation.” IN currently genetics still does not have sufficient knowledge to accurately state the inevitability of the occurrence of the disease in each specific case.

Which line is more likely to have bad heredity?

Along with the question of whether a terrible disease is inherited or not, the type of inheritance itself was closely studied. Through which line is the disease most often transmitted? There is a popular belief that heredity through the female line is much less common than through the male line.

However, psychiatry does not confirm such a guess. In the question of how schizophrenia is inherited more often - through the female line or through the male line, medical practice revealed that gender is not decisive. That is, transmission of a pathological gene from mother to son or daughter is possible with the same probability as from father.

The myth that the disease is transmitted to children more often through the male line is associated only with the peculiarities of the pathology in men. As a rule, mentally ill men are simply more visible in society than women: they are more aggressive, there are more alcoholics and drug addicts among them, they experience stress more difficultly and mental complications, adapt worse to society after suffering mental crises.

About other hypotheses of the occurrence of pathology

Does it happen that a mental disorder affects a person in whose family there were absolutely no such pathologies? Medicine has clearly answered in the affirmative the question of whether schizophrenia can be acquired.

Along with heredity, among the main reasons for the development of the disease, doctors also name:

neurochemical disorders;
alcoholism and drug addiction;
a traumatic experience experienced by a person;
maternal illness during pregnancy, etc.

The pattern of development of a mental disorder is always individual. Hereditary disease or not - in each specific case it is visible only when taking into account all possible reasons disorders of consciousness.

Obviously, with a combination of bad heredity and other provoking factors, the risk of getting sick will be higher.

Additional Information. More details about the causes of pathology, its development and possible prevention says psychotherapist, candidate of medical sciences Galushchak A.

What to do if you are at risk?

If you know for sure that you have an innate predisposition to mental disorders, you need to take this information seriously. It is easier to prevent any disease than to cure it.

Simple preventive measures quite within the capabilities of any person:

Lead a healthy lifestyle, give up alcohol and other bad habits, choose the optimal mode for yourself physical activity and rest, control your diet.
Regularly see a psychologist, consult a doctor promptly if you have any unfavorable symptoms, and do not self-medicate.
Pay attention Special attention to your mental well-being: avoid stressful situations, excessive loads.

Remember that a competent and calm attitude towards a problem makes the path to success in any business easier. At timely application to doctors, nowadays many cases of schizophrenia are successfully treated, and patients get a chance for a healthy and happy life.