Little is known about the effects of environmental
enrichment on psychophysiological measures of arousal and
orienting in humans. This study tests the hypothesis that
early educational and health ...enrichment is associated with
long-term increases in psychophysiological orienting and
arousal. One hundred children were experimentally assigned
to a two-year enriched nursery school intervention at ages
3–5 years and matched at age 3 years on psychophysiological
measures, gender, and ethnicity to 100 comparisons who
received the normal educational experience. Children were
retested 6–8 years later at age 11 years on skin
conductance (SC) and electroencephalogram (EEG) measures
of arousal and attention during pre- and postexperimental
rest periods and during the continuous performance task.
Nursery enrichment was associated with increased SC amplitudes,
faster SC rise times, faster SC recovery times, and less
slow-wave EEG during both rest and CPT conditions. This
is believed to be the first study to show that early environmental
enrichment is associated with long-term increases in psychophysiological
orienting and arousal in humans. Results draw attention
to the important influence of the early environment in
shaping later psychophysiological functioning.
Objective: The aim was to study whether early weaning from breastfeeding may be associated with increased risk of schizophrenia.
Method: The current sample comprises 6841 individuals from the ...Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort of whom 1671 (24%) had been breastfed for 2 weeks or less (early weaning) and 5170 (76%) had been breastfed longer. Maternal schizophrenia, parental social status, single mother status and gender were included as covariates in a multiple regression analysis of the effect of early weaning on the risk of hospitalization with schizophrenia.
Results: The sample comprised 93 cases of schizophrenia (1.4%). Maternal schizophrenia was the strongest risk factor and a significant association between single mother status and elevated offspring risk of schizophrenia was also observed. Early weaning was significantly related to later schizophrenia in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses (adjusted odds ratio 1.73 with 95% CI: 1.13–2.67).
Conclusion: No or <2 weeks of breastfeeding was associated with elevated risk of schizophrenia. The hypothesis of some protective effect of breastfeeding against the risk of later schizophrenia is supported by our data.
Neurodevelopment is an area of psychiatry which has attracted huge interest in the last few decades. There is substantial evidence that perinatal events can contribute to later development of mental ...disorder. In the current perspective article we propose a novel polyvagal theory which attempts to link prenatal events with neurodevelopment and the later onset of psychiatric disorder.
IQ and mental disorder in young men Mortensen, Erik Lykke; Sørensen, Holger Jelling; Jensen, Hans Henrik ...
British journal of psychiatry
187
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Most research investigating the relationship between IQ and risk of mental disorder has focused on schizophrenia.
To illuminate the relationship between IQ test scores in early adulthood and various ...mental disorders.
For 3289 men from the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort, military IQ test scores and information on psychiatric hospitalisation were available. We identified 350 men in the Danish Psychiatric Central Register, and compared the mean IQ test scores of nine diagnostic categories with the mean scores of 2939 unregistered cohort controls.
Schizophrenia and related disorders, other psychotic disorders, adjustment, personality, alcohol and substance-use-related disorders were significantly associated with low IQ scores, but this association remained significant for the four non-psychotic disorders only when adjusting for comorbid diagnoses. For most diagnostic categories, test scores were positively associated with the length of the interval between testing and first admission. ICD mood disorders as well as neuroses and related disorders were not significantly associated with low IQ scores.
Low IQ may be a consequence of mental disease or a causal factor in psychotic and non-psychotic disorders.
Objective: To illuminate the possible associations between height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) during early adulthood and the development of schizophrenia.
Method: This prospective study is ...based on an all‐male sample of 3210 individuals from the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort, comprising individuals born between 1959 and 1961. In 1999, cases of schizophrenia were identified in the Danish Psychiatric Central Register, and the cases were compared with the cohort pool of controls with respect to height, weight, and BMI from draft records. The effect of low BMI was adjusted for parental social status when the cohort members were 1 year old, birth weight, birth length, and maternal pre‐pregnancy BMI.
Results: Forty‐five cases of schizophrenia had a lower young adult mean body weight and BMI than controls. A significant inverse relationship between BMI and risk of later schizophrenia was found. For each unit increase in BMI, the adjusted odds ratio was 0.81 (95% CI, 0.70–0.93) and the risk of schizophrenia decreased by 19%. Excluding individuals who had been admitted to an in‐patient facility before or within 5 years after appearing before the draft board, yielded virtually the same results. No significant differences between cases and controls were observed with respect to adult height.
Conclusion: Independent of several possible confounders, an inverse relationship between young adult BMI and risk of later development of schizophrenia was demonstrated in this all‐male sample.
This article reviews
premorbid indicators of psychosis that may be relevant to primary intervention. These risk
markers are divided into two categories: (1) precursors related to early etiological ...factors
(family psychiatric history, perinatal and obstetric complications, neurobehavior deficits,
early parental separation, institutionalization, and poor family function) and (2) precursors
signaling latent mental illness (personality measurements indicating proneness to psychosis,
and teacher ratings indicating emotional lability, social anxiety, social withdrawal,
passivity, poor peer relations, and disruptive and aggressive behavior). Because teacher
ratings have been shown to be powerful predictors of adult mental breakdown, part of this
article focuses on a specific study that assesses such ratings as predictors of psychosis in a
high-risk population. Risk indicators may also provide clues about protective factors relevant
for primary prevention.
This study examined the relation between childhood ocular alignment deficits and adult psychiatric outcomes among children at high-risk for schizophrenia and controls. A sample of 265 Danish children ...was administered a standardized eye exam assessing strabismus and related ocular alignment deficits. All children whose mothers or fathers had a psychiatric diagnosis of schizophrenia comprised the first group (
N
=
90). Children who had at least one parent with a diagnosis other than schizophrenia comprised the first matched control group (
N
=
93). The second control group consisted of children with no parental diagnoses (
N
=
82). In 1992, adult psychiatric outcome data were obtained for 242 of the original subjects.
It was found that children who later developed a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder had significantly higher eye exam scale and strabismus scale scores compared to children who developed other non-psychotic psychopathology and children who did not develop a mental illness. The mean rank for children in the high-risk group (offspring of parents with schizophrenia) on the eye scale and the strabismus scale was greater than the mean rank for children in the matched control groups (both offspring of parents with other non-psychotic disorder and no mental illness), although the results failed to reach statistical significance.
Results from this study suggest a premorbid relation between ocular deficits and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in childhood prior to onset of psychopathology in adulthood. Strabismus may serve as a premorbid marker for spectrum disorders and may have implications for the understanding of early aberrant neurological development related to later schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.
Univariate prediction models of schizophrenia may be adequate for hypothesis testing but are narrowly focused and limited in predictive efficacy. Therefore, we used a multivariate design to maximize ...the prediction of schizophrenia from premorbid measures and to evaluate the relative importance of various predictors. Two hundred twelve Danish subjects with at least one parent diagnosed in the schizophrenia spectrum (high risk) and 99 matched subjects with no such parent (low risk) were assessed on 25 premorbid variables in seven domains (genetic risk, birth factors, autonomic responsiveness, cognitive functioning, rearing environment, personality, and school behavior) when the subjects averaged 15 years of age. Twenty-five years later, 33 subjects had received lifetime diagnoses of schizophrenia. Discriminant function analyses were used to discriminate schizophrenia outcomes from no mental illness and nonschizophrenia outcomes on the basis of premorbid measures. Regardless of the comparison group used, schizophrenia was predicted by the interaction of genetic risk with rearing environment, and disruptive school behavior. Within the high-risk group, two-thirds of schizophrenia outcomes were correctly predicted by these premorbid measures; three-quarters of those with no mental illness were also correctly predicted. Prediction was enhanced among those with two schizophrenia spectrum parents, lending support to a multiplicative gene × environment model. Implications for early identification/primary prevention efforts are discussed.
Objective: To test the effects of father's alcoholism on the development and remission from alcoholic drinking by age 40.
Method: Subjects were selected from a Danish birth cohort that included 223 ...sons of alcoholic fathers (high risk; HR) and 106 matched controls (low risk; LR). Clinical examinations were performed at age 40 (n = 202) by a psychiatrist using structured interviews and DSM‐III‐R diagnostic criteria.
Results: HR subjects were significantly more likely than LR subjects to develop alcohol dependence (31% vs. 16%), but not alcohol abuse (17% vs. 15%). More subjects with alcohol abuse were in remission at age 40 than subjects with alcohol dependence. Risk did not predict remission from either alcohol abuse or alcohol dependence.
Conclusion: Familial influences may play a stronger role in the development of alcoholism than in the remission or recovery from alcoholism.
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