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Gender and Schizophrenia Results of an Epidemiologically-based Family Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Kenneth S. Kendler  and
Dermot Walsh
Kenneth S. Kendler*
Affiliation:
Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
Dermot Walsh
Affiliation:
The Health Research Board and St. Loman's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
*
Professor Kendler, Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University, Box 980710, Richmond VA 23298–0710, USA.
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Abstract

Background

Gender may have a significant impact on the prevalence, age at onset, symptoms, course and outcome of schizophrenia, as well as on the pattern of psychopathology in relatives.

Method

We examined these questions in the Roscommon Family Study, in which the probands were epidemiologically sampled from a case registry and followed up an average of 15 years after onset. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 86% of traceable living relatives.

Results

The treated lifetime prevalence of DSM–III–R schizophrenia was 0.54 ± 0.06% in men and 0.28 ± 0.04% in women. No significant differences were seen in the age at onset, symptoms, course or outcome of schizophrenia. The risks for schizophrenia, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, affective illness and alcoholism were similar in relatives of male and female schizophrenic probands.

Conclusions

Gender has little impact on the presentation and course of schizophrenia in the west of Ireland. The familial liability to schizophrenia did not differ in affected men and women. No evidence was found that schizophrenia in women, compared to men, is, from a symptomatic or familial perspective, more closely related to affective illness. The substantial gender difference in the prevalence rate of schizophrenia in Ireland cannot be explained by women having a greater resistance to the familial predisposition to illness.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 167 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 184 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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