Does schizophrenia run in families?
Irving Gottesman
Family studies on schizophrenia were reviewed. That the disorder runs in families did not suggest it was genetically inherited, since cultural transmission occurs from parents to children. Twin and adoption studies were presented as the standard methods to disentangle contributions from genes and the environment. Gottesman used a computer-based method for calculating the odds of becoming schizophrenic based on the many causes. The book examines the problems caused by schizophrenia for relatives of patients and for society at large, larger-scale ones exemplified by the eugenics policies of states such as Nazi Germany. Two final chapters cover molecular biology and neuroanatomy briefly. Newer methods of behavioral genetics being researched at the time of publication, such as linkage analysis which used the likelihood of neighboring genes being inherited together, were not covered.
Social construction of schizophrenia
Other genetic analysis examines the role of alleles. One study ascribes links between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder by studying a total group of 6909 Europeans, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. Another study suggests that Genetic markers may be very dissimilar among different lineages of DNA in people of different cultures, making an international commonality in genetics as a precipitating factor in schizophrenia difficult to identify.>