Stressful life events in recent-onset schizophrenia: reduced frequencies and altered subjective appraisals.

While research strongly supports the notion that stressful life events may trigger the exacerbation of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia, the mechanisms through which affected individuals respond to life events during the early course of this disorder have received limited attention. This 12-month longitudinal study compared the frequencies, qualitative characteristics, and subjective appraisals of life events in recent-onset schizophrenia patients (n=78) and a nonpatient comparison sample (n=63). Negative and positive life events were assessed using a semi-structured interview every 4 weeks among patients and approximately every 4 months among controls, and participants appraised each event they experienced in terms of emotional impact, controllability, and effectiveness in handling the event. Schizophrenia patients reported significantly lower rates of life events than their nonpsychiatric counterparts across nearly every type of negative and positive event examined. In the context of generally lower event frequencies, patients appraised the negative and positive events they did experience as less controllable and more poorly handled than controls, and also appraised positive events as less desirable. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding susceptibility to stress during the early course of schizophrenia.

MMPI vulnerability indicators for schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder: UCLA family study of biological parents of offspring with childhood-onset schizophrenia or ADHD.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scores were examined for 50 parents of children with an onset of schizophrenia prior to 14 years of age, 153 parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and 168 parents of community comparison children. The parents were participants in the UCLA Family Study. The mean scores on all standard MMPI scales were within normal limits for all three groups of participants. Parents of schizophrenia probands were significantly higher on scale Sc than parents of community comparison children. Previous research has shown that scale Sc may be associated with a genetic liability to developing schizophrenia. Thus, scale Sc shows promise as an indicator of a heightened risk for the development of schizophrenia. The parents of the ADHD probands were significantly higher on standard clinical scale Pd than community comparison parents. Mothers of both schizophrenia and ADHD probands shared some personality indicators of stress reactivity. Although this study, like all non-adoptee family studies, cannot disentangle genetic effects on the development of these personality characteristics from environmental effects, we speculate that the emotional distress resulting in higher levels of the MMPI characteristics seen in the patients' mothers reflects the impact of raising a psychiatrically ill offspring.