The largest UK study ever to look at why adults develop schizophrenia has found that children born into families which split-up before they reach their 16th birthday, are two and a half times more likely to develop schizophrenia than those raised by parents who stay together.
The study, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London published in this month’s Psychological Medicine, sought to explore why African-Caribbean and African origin communities experience such high rates of schizophrenia and manic psychosis. In their first leg of investigation, the researchers found that African-Caribbean origin adults were nine times more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than White British adults, and African origin adults six times. The second leg of their research looked at the causes of these high rates. This is where the researchers found that ‘separation from one or both parents for more than one year before the age of 16, as a consequence of family breakdown, was associated with a 2.5 fold increased risk in developing psychosis in adulthood.’ This conclusion was drawn as, from their community samples, separation from one or both parents occurred at a rate of 31 per cent in the African-Caribbean sample compared to 18 per cent in the White British sample.
What was not clear from the summary of findings released by King’s, is whether children who had never been raised by two parents, in other words had not experienced the disruption of family breakdown as such, were equally at risk. The other unclear aspect of the findings is whether the researchers controlled for ethnic origin – whether they compared the frequency of schizophrenia amongst African-Caribbean and African origin adults from homes that had remained in tact. The assumption is that this indeed was controlled for as one of the research’s reported breakthroughs is that it questions the long-held belief that such psychoses are purely genetic. Certainly it is this aspect which makes the research significant: marking a break with previous, seemingly unchallengeable assumptions that the causes of psychological illness of this type are solely attributable to genetics, finally enabling perhaps, greater discussion about the importance of stability, economic and emotional, for children. It continues to puzzle me that we are still reluctant to talk about families splitting up as potentially problematic. The pragmatic pitfalls, unrelated to value or moral notions but to do with the obvious danger of income dips, for example. This elephant in the room was highlighted by one of the lead researchers’ response when the Guardian asked whether schizophrenia would rise if the number of children in one-parent families rose. Refusing to make any prediction, Dr Craig Morgan said: ‘Family breakdown may be particularly important when it is rare – when children’s peers aren’t in the situation’. This conclusion seemed to somewhat problematise the researchers’ findings that the increased incidence of schizophrenia amongst adults who have experienced family breakdown was due to these three possible elements: the stress of parental separation, the stress of abuse possibly preceding it and the possible ensuing poverty. Rather than burying our heads in the sand about the issue, it would surely be better to look at how the potentially adverse effects of family breakdown might be mitigated, if not through pre-emptive strategies, by minimising the probabilities of poverty and stress on the child.