An Analysis of Familial Data on Psychiatric Patients: Parental Age, Family Size, Birth Order, and Ordinal Position

Psychophysiological Reactions of a Rural and Suburban Population in Taiwan

“…In order to obtain information about sibling position4) and family size of the sample population and the group with psychophysiological reactions, and since the majority of sibships were complete among the present random sample, the Greenwood and Yule method as discussed by Gregory (1958) was applied in examining the frequency distribution of birth order and ordinal position. Although the prevalence rates of psychophysiological reactions can be used for the comparison study, an evaluation of frequency distribution of sibling rank in the sample and patient group was made first to assess sibling rank composition of these two groups separately.…”

“…In this section, sibling rank and family life patterns of the sample population are considered. As Gregory (1958) stated, the investigation of parental age, family size, birth order and ordinal position can be expected to yield information regarding the relative influence of genetic and environmental factors in the etiology of mental disorders. Caudill (1963; made investigations on sibling rank among Japanese psychiatric patients and has illustrated how changes taking place in Japan are reflected in the characteristics of psychiatric patients according to the sibling position of the patient and the type of family from which the patient came, in the dual structure of the present Japanese economy.…”

Statistical Methods in Psychiatric Research

“…The distribution of maternal age in the population has, of course, been changing in the course of time so that it was necessary to calculate an expected distribution of maternal age by weighting the known distributions for separate 5-year periods from 1901 to 1940 (as given in the Registrar-General's Civil Text for 1946-50, Appendix 3, Table 3) by the known distribution of year of birth of the patients. This effect for schizophrenics was also found by Gregory (1959), and shown to occur for neuroses (Norton, 1952) and homosexuality (Slater, 1962;Abe and Moran, 1969). By far the best known example is that of mongolism (Down's syndrome), a form of mental defect, and this has been studied in great detail (Penrose and Smith, 1966). In the latter case the best data for maternal age are given by Collman and Stoller (1962), and their frequency distribution of maternal age is distinctly bimodal, corresponding to two (at least) underlying chromosomal abnormalities.…”

“…These are surveyed in some detail by Barker and Record (1967b) who also take into consideration maternal age. Analyses of birth order for psychiatric patients have been published by Norton (1952) for neurotics, by Slater (1962) for homosexuals, by Gregory (1958) for several psychiatric illnesses and by Penrose (1934) for mongols, but no complete analysis involving all five factors has been carried out for any disease and would be difficult. It could be carried out, if adequate data were available, by the methods used by Novitski and Sandler (1956)who were concerned with the effect of parental ages and birth order on the sex ratio at birth.…”

Alcoholism, Family Size and Ordinal Position

“…These factors would result in an unduly low estimate for mean family size, an unduly high proportion of families containing only one child at the time of the census, and an unduly low proportion of large families. Gregory (8) pointed out that it is essential that such comparisons be made with respect to, a) all children ever born, b) to mothers (not all married women), c) who have completed their families and, d) are comparable in age and background to the mothers of the patients with whom they are compared. Fortunately, the 1941 census of Canada included precisely the data on fertility of Ontario mothers which is required to make an appropriate comparison.…”