Parent-Child Concordance with Respect to Sex and Diagnosis in Schizophrenia and Manic-Depressive Psychosis

Abstract

In the search for an explanation of the aetiology of psychiatric illness, the study of the family as a unit for psychiatric research is becoming increasingly necessary. That family members resemble one another in many respects seems an intuitively correct idea. Children resemble their parents in both physical attributes and temperament; the former is mainly attributed to heredity and the latter to an interaction of heredity and social learning. Previous psychiatric studies of the family have indicated two areas for further investigation: firstly, sex concordance, and secondly diagnostic concordance among psychiatrically ill first degree relatives. The literature relating to these areas is abundant, and the main conclusions are summarized below.