Risk Factors of Schizophrenia

Through research studies and epidemiology regarding the frequency of occurrence of schizophrenia, scientists have discovered a lot of risk factors involved in the development of schizophrenia. This research has provided indications and guidance for identifying the causes better.

Considering a group of people, a maximum of 1% of the people (nearly 0.8% only as measured by National Comorbidity Study) are diagnosed to have schizophrenia, which amounts to nearly 2.2 million Americans.

However, everyone does not have the same risk of developing schizophrenia. The risk factors are mostly genetically derived and hence schizophrenia is a disease involved with the family members. The most significant of the risk factors in family are

• A sibling (brother or sister) with the disease – increases the risk to 9%. This occurs even if the sibling is a non-identical twin.

• One parent with the disease increases the risk for developing schizophrenia to 13%. It occurs even in the case of an adopted child, since this is a chronic mental illness.

• An identical twin increases the risk to 28%.

• Both the parents affected with the disease increases the risk for developing schizophrenia to 36%.

Scientists have discovered several risk factors as well as risk-minimizing factors in relation to the occurrence of schizophrenia in diverse groups of people. The other non-familial risk factors include

• Living in a thickly-populated city – a person when grown in dense urban area is twice more likely to get schizophrenia compared to other people in a country.

• A person, if he is an African American, is 1.5 times as much more likely to get schizophrenia as compared to white Americans. But the reason behind has been found to be that most of the African Americans live in cities and hence is untrue if people in the country alone are accounted.

• A person, if he is of Hispanic origin, is less likely to get schizophrenia. It has been found in a study that Hispanic residents living in Los Angeles were only half likely to get schizophrenia as compared to non-Hispanic residents. But the problem here is that Hispanic people ethnically belong to several racial groups and hence it is not clear whether this risk-minimizing factor is due to culture or genetically related.

• Prenatal exposure to hunger – the children of pregnant women in famine when subject to hunger during the first three months especially, are twice more likely to get schizophrenia.
All the above factors do not contribute to schizophrenia as such but they might serve as a trigger at times. Research is being conducted to identify the underlying differences in all these people to explain their risk level variations.

Stress, though not found to be a factor, is commonly believed to cause schizophrenia. People from traumatic childhoods or abusive families are alone not likely to get schizophrenia as compared to people from healthy childhoods, considering all other risk factors into account.

But most schizophrenic people have had traumatic childhoods or abusive families or have a compounded tragedy in their life, especially because these children have no other resources or support to cope with their illness. But there are also people who have come from healthy and supportive families. And it is totally unfair to find fault with the loving parents. Hence the reason behind the cause of schizophrenia is not understood very clearly.