Early Indicators of Developmental Risk: Rochester Longitudinal Study

TLDR: It was found that a specific maternal diagnosis of schizophrenia had the least impact on the child's behavior, and both social status and severity/chronicity of illness showed a greater impact on development.

Abstract: Early indicators of schizophrenic outcomes were sought in a group of children of chronically ill schizophrenic women. A sample of pregnant women with varying degrees of mental illness were examined during the perinatal period and recruited into a 4-year longitudinal evaluation, which included cognitive, psychomotor, social, and emotional assessments at birth, 4, 12, 30, and 48 months of age. The mothers varied on mental health dimensions of diagnosis, severity of symptomatology, and chronicity of illness. Other factors included in the analyses were socioeconomic status (SES), race, sex of child, and family size. Hypotheses were tested to determine the relative impact of three sets of variables on the child's behavior: (1) specific maternal psychiatric diagnosis, (2) severity and chronicity of disturbance independent of diagnosis, and (3) general social status. We found that a specific maternal diagnosis of schizophrenia had the least impact. Neurotic-depressive mothers produced worse development in their children than schizophrenic or personality-disordered mothers. Both social status and severity/chronicity of illness showed a greater impact on development. Children of more severely or chronically ill mothers and lower-SES black children performed most poorly. These results do not support etiological models based on simple biological or environmental transmission of schizophrenia. The role of social and family environmental factors in predicting child cognitive and socialemotional competence was further evaluated using a multiple risk index. Children with high multiple environmental risk scores had much worse outcomes than children with low multiple risk scores. We have been conducting a longitudinal study since 1970 that investigates the role of parental mental illness, social status, and other family cognitive and social variables that might be risk factors in the early development of children from birth through 4 years of age. Our investigation was cast as an attempt to identify variables that place a child at risk for the later development of schizophrenia. The target population was the offspring of schizophrenic women, who have been shown to be more than 10 times