What are the chances?

[Janey]

Hello. This will be my first time posting here. I have read a couple of the threads already posted here about Schizophrenia but I have a few questions on my mind that I have been recently seriously thinking over. I would really appreciate any form of feedback.

 

I am engaged to a schizophrenic man and I love him so much. He's had very traumatic childhood and plus an abuse of marijuana at a younger age led him to develop schizophrenia (please feel free to correct any wrong ideas about it if I have any).

 

I have an uncle ( a close one, my father's brother) who lives with us (he's got a house of his own although it's still on the same compound) who had an episode to which we all believe to be schizophrenia. It was just once, I was very little then but old enough to remember some details. I don't know or remember what caused him to snap but all of a sudden, he gave away all his money and said that he's going to walk and be with his dead parents (my paternal grandparents)...he said they talked to him and tell him stuffs. Then after that, he said he'd hear voices telling him to pray Ave Maria over and over again. Then he refused to touch a computer because he believed they are the devil's instrument and he lost his job and was demoted from being a supervisor and was given a job as a janitor ( he was kept by the company due to loyalty to the family). He stopped drinker beer and smoking overnight and hasn't touched both for about 15 years now. He was not given a medication nor was he able to see the help he should have had. He's never had an episode ever since but he says he still hears the voices but he's learned to ignore them.

 

Since the picture of marriage and family has entered the scene, I am now contemplating about the chances of our offspring to be schizophrenics?

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

[Toadie]

I've recently done a bit of reading on the topic, and it appears that it is not hereditary, although you can be slightly genetically predisposed to it. I think the most important thing is to make sure that the child receives the emotional support that they need from their parents, and stay away from anything that could trigger the onset of such diseases. From what I've read, the reason things like this run in families sometimes is because if you have, for example, a bipolar person who has a child, the parent's depression will translate to a lack of emotional support for the child, which could lead to mental problems for the child.

 

 

I'm also not a professional, so definitely wait for someone else to confirm/reject my statement

[CharonY]

The problem is that schizophrenia is ill-defined and it is likely that a lot of different unrelated disorders are lumped together so that diagnostics is very difficult. This makes it very different to discern in studies whether (and how much) it is hereditary, of course. That being said, there are strong claims that it has hereditary components, but only multigenic models appear to fit. Which often means that the players have not been identified and that the precise mechanisms are still unclear. Other claim that epigenetic factors are of more importance. In other words, no one can tell with precision at this point. It appears to me (with the caveat that this is not really my field, I only had touched this topic peripherally) that there appears to be a consensus forming that stresses genetic over environmental factors. That being said, assuming that there are genetic factors and even assuming that they are the predominant cause for schizophrenia, without knowing the players (i.e. the alleles) it is basically impossible to predict whether and how likely your offspring will inherit these traits.