Current and lifetime psychopathology was assessed in 50 Israeli children of parents with schizophrenia who were either of kibbutz families and raised collectively with the help of child care workers, or of urban families and raised by their parents. Index subjects were compared with 50 matched control children of healthy parents by means of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Israel. Subjects were evaluated in adulthood at a mean age of 31 years; schizophrenia was found exclusively among children of ill parents, and no effect of town or kibbutz rearing on risk for schizophrenia was observed. Major affective illness was more common among kibbutz index subjects. Affective symptomatology observed in some index parents was evenly distributed among town and kibbutz parents and was not related to the diagnosis of affective disorders in at-risk children. Current adult functioning was similar between town-and kibbutz-raised subjects (and in general reflected good adjustment); an excess of personality disorders was found among index subjects. The present findings support the concept that both familial and environmental factors operate in the expression of psychopathology.

Eighty-nine subjects of the original sample of the National Institute of Mental Health joint study by the United States and Israel, known as the Israeli High-Risk Study, were given a clinical interview and a questionnaire measuring locus of control (LOC) during the second phase of the study, when the subjects were adolescents. During phases 3 and 4, approximately 8 and 15 years later, the subjects were psychiatrically assessed and 56 of them repeated the LOC questionnaire. The two measures of LOC were correlated, as were general assessments of mental health (MH). Adolescent LOC was related to lifetime MH, although LOC and MH were not related to each other concurrently in either adolescence or adulthood. The best predictive model for lifetime MH outcomes was a combination of adolescent MH and LOC variables; background variables, including parental schizophrenia, were superfluous. The data suggest that whereas adolescent MH is the best predictor of general MH, adolescent LOC is the better predictor of schizophrenia and major affective disorders.

We report a 25-year followup of a group of 50 children at genetic risk for schizophrenia (by virtue of having a parent with the disorder) and 50 matched controls. The children who eventually developed schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including schizophrenia, were identifiable by cognitive-psychophysiological, neurointegrative, and social/personality traits in the preteenage period. The children at risk were also more likely to develop other Axis I disorders, chiefly affective. Moreover, the risk of Axis I disorders was significantly greater among children raised in the group atmosphere of a kibbutz than among those raised in their own nuclear families in cities and towns in Israel. The study is a unique contribution to knowledge of factors underlying the development of psychopathology.

In an earlier study, skin conductance orienting response (SCOR) and anxiety measures obtained when the subjects of the Israeli High-Risk Study were 11 years old were analyzed, using adult diagnostic information, when the subjects were 26 years old. The present study considers similar data obtained from most of this sample when the subjects were 16 years old. As in the earlier analysis, those subjects who would receive a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis at 26 had higher anxiety ratings at age 16. Nondiagnosed index subjects also had significantly higher anxiety ratings than the nondiagnosed controls. The subjects who would receive affective spectrum diagnoses at age 26 had the most hyporesponsive SCORs, as predicted, while the subjects who would later be diagnosed in the schizophrenia spectrum had an unexpected hyperresponsive SCOR to the dishabituation tone in a habituation series. Further consideration of the long-term stability of SCORs seems necessary; they may be related to the developing psychopathological processes.

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