Differences in social adjustment during adulthood between adoptees with high and low risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders - the Finnish adoptive family study of schizophrenia.

Objective: To investigate differences in social adjustment during adulthood between adoptees with high genetic risk (HR) and low genetic risk (LR) for schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Methods: This study is a subsample of the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia. The study sample consisted of 120  adoptees whose biological mothers had DSM-III-R verified schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and 142 socio-demographically matched control adoptees.

The Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia: differences in somatic diseases and conditions between adoptees with high or low genetic risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Background And Aims: There is some evidence that offspring of patients with schizophrenia have higher somatic morbidity, which is thought to be partially due to genetic links between somatic disorders and schizophrenia. This study explored differences in somatic diseases and conditions of adoptees with high genetic risk (HR) or low genetic risk (LR) for schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Material And Methods: The study is part of the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia.

Deficits in adolescent social functioning, dysfunctional family processes and genetic risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders as risk factors for later psychiatric morbidity of adoptees.

Social functioning deficits during adolescence are associated with later psychiatric morbidity, particularly in offspring at high genetic risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. However, a shortcoming of earlier study findings is the lack of control of the impact of the family rearing environment. The study was aimed to examine the association of adoptees' social functioning during adolescence, adoptive family functioning, and adoptees' high (HR) or low (LR) genetic risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders with adoptees' later psychiatric morbidity.

Associations of Duration of Preadoption Out-of-home Care, Genetic Risk for Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders and Adoptive Family Functioning with Later Psychiatric Disorders of Adoptees.

The objective was to examine the impacts of duration of preadoption out-of-home care and adoptive family functioning on later psychiatric morbidity of adoptees with high (HR) and low (LR) genetic risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The study uses nationwide data from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia. The study population in this substudy consisted of 43 h adoptees and 128 LR adoptees.

Adolescent Social Functioning Deficits in Association With Adoptive Family Functioning and Genetic Risk for Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: The Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia.

Social functioning deficits (SFDs) during adolescence represent potential vulnerability indicators to schizophrenia spectrum disorders, but little is known about how both family environmental and genetic factors contribute to SFDs. The aim of this study was to examine the association of adoptees' adolescent social functioning with adoptive family functioning and adoptees' high (HR) or low (LR) genetic risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The present subsample from the nationwide Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia included 88 HR and 83 LR adoptees.

Dysfunctional family functioning in high socioeconomic status families as a risk factor for the development of psychiatric disorders in adoptees: the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia.

Purpose: Earlier findings indicate that socioeconomic status (SES) of family associates with family functioning. This study examined the impacts of family functioning and genetic risk for schizophrenia on psychiatric morbidity of adoptees in families of high SES (HSES) and low SES (LSES).

Methods: The study population is a subgroup of the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia.

Adolescent social functioning in offspring at high risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders in the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia.

Background: Children and adolescents with a genetic risk for schizophrenia are often found to have poorer social functioning compared to their controls. However, less is known about high-risk offspring who have not been reared by a biological parent with schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to examine deficits in social functioning in adolescence as a possible factor related to genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and also to examine possible gender differences in these associations.

Interaction of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia and family functioning in adopted-away offspring of mothers with schizophrenia.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the association of family functioning to psychiatric disorders of adoptees with and without genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia.

Methods: The data is based on the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia. The study sample consisted of 346 adoptive families, of which 175 adoptees had high (HR) and 171 low (LR) genetic risk for schizophrenia.

How is family interaction analysed as a risk factor for schizophrenia? A cross-method comparison.

In this paper, we compare two methodological approaches - Conversation Analysis (CA) and the Communication Deviance (CD) Scale - in detecting confusing family interaction, which is considered one of the risk factors for schizophrenia. CA is a method for identifying and describing actions in interaction, whereas the CD Scale presents the criteria for identifying communication defects in the field of schizophrenia research. Our aim is to determine whether the approaches resonate with and could complement each other in analysing the same interactional data - i.

Association of adoptive child's thought disorders and schizophrenia spectrum disorders with their genetic liability for schizophrenia spectrum disorders, season of birth and parental Communication Deviance.

Joint effects of genotype and the environment have turned out to be significant in the development of psychotic disorders. The purpose of the present study was to assess the association of an adoptive child׳s thought and schizophrenia spectrum disorders with genetic and environmental risk indicators and their interactions. A subgroup of the total sample used in the Finnish Adoptive Family Study was considered in the present study.

Stability in MMPI among adoptees with high and low genetic risk for schizophrenia and with low Communication Deviance of their adoptive parents.

Stability has been considered an important aspect of vulnerability to schizophrenia. The temporal stability of the scales in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was examined, using adoptees from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia. Adoptees who were high-risk (HR) offspring of biological mothers having a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (n=28) and low-risk (LR) controls (n=46) were evaluated using 15 MMPI scales at the initial assessment (HR, mean age 24 years; LR, mean age 23 years) and at the follow-up assessment after a mean interval of 11 years.

Pilot evaluation of the impact of structured child-centered interventions on psychiatric symptom profile of parents with serious somatic illness: struggle for life trial.

This is a trial of cancer patients who are seriously somatically ill and of how their distress affects their spouse or children. In the pilot phase the authors examined whether there are changes in psychiatric symptom profile of seriously somatically ill and healthy parents between assessments concerning a situation before the onset of parental illness, in current situation before intervention and 4 months after the intervention. The study is a family cluster, randomized, controlled treatment trial for parents and children in families with a parent who has a serious somatic illness.

Verbal learning and memory and their associations with brain morphology and illness course in schizophrenia spectrum psychoses.

The California Verbal Learning Test and structural brain imaging were administered to 57 subjects with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 94 controls in a general population sample. Cases had lower semantic cluster scores. Poorer verbal memory strategies were associated with longer duration of illness and heavier use of antipsychotic medication.

Genetic vulnerability and premature death in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a 28-year follow-up of adoptees in the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia.

Background: Excess mortality is widely reported among schizophrenia patients, but rarely examined in adoption study settings.

Aim: We investigated whether genetic background plays a role in the premature death of adoptees with schizophrenia.

Methods: Mortality among 382 adoptees in the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia was monitored from 1977 to 2005 through the national causes-of-death register.

Communication Deviance in parents of families with adoptees at a high or low risk of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and its associations with attributes of the adoptee and the adoptive parents.

Communication Deviance (CD) in rearing parents is a known indicator of a psychopathology risk in the offspring, but the direction of the effects of these two factors on each other has remained an unresolved question. The purpose of the present study was to clarify this issue by assessing the relationship of CD in adoptive parents with certain attributes of the adoptee and adoptive parents themselves. The subjects were 109 adoptees at a high or low risk of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and their adoptive parents.

MMPI measures as signs of predisposition to mental disorder among adoptees at high risk for schizophrenia.

The DSM-III-R diagnoses of a group of adoptees were predicted by the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) schizophrenia-related scales in the Finnish Adoptive Family Study. The sample consisted of 60 high-risk (HR) adopted-away offspring of biologic mothers with a diagnosis of broad schizophrenia spectrum and 76 low-risk (LR) control adoptees. They were assessed with the MMPI before the onset of any psychiatric disorder at a mean age of 24 years.

Interaction of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia and Communication Deviance of adoptive parents associated with MMPI schizophrenia vulnerability indicators of adoptees.

The aim of this study was to establish possible genotype-environment interaction in high-risk and low-risk adoptees' vulnerability to schizophrenia. The study population consisted of a subgroup of 41 adoptive families with a high genetic risk adoptee and 58 families with a low genetic risk adoptee from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia. Communication style was assessed based on the Communication Deviance (CD) of the adoptive parents, and the adoptees' vulnerability indicators were measured with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).

II. Genotype-environment interaction in the schizophrenia spectrum: qualitative observations.

Previous reports from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia have documented significant interplay between genetics (G) and family rearing (E), leading to adoptee outcomes of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Quantitative evidence for this interplay is significantly enhanced when both high genetic liability and severe environmental dysfunction are present. However, when either genetic liability is low or the rearing environment is healthy, the adoptees appear to be resiliently protected against a pathologic outcome.

I. Genotype-environment interaction in the schizophrenia spectrum: genetic liability and global family ratings in the Finnish Adoption Study.

In the Finnish Adoption Study, a national sample of adoptees with high versus low genetic liability for schizophrenia spectrum disorders was indexed by DSM-III-R diagnoses of their biological, adopting-away mothers. The rearing-family environments of the adoptees were independently evaluated from global ratings of directly observed adoptive family relationships. The interaction of high genetic liability and dysfunction of the rearing families predicted highly significantly to schizophrenia spectrum disorder of the adoptees at 21-year follow-up.

Differentiation of adoptees at high versus low genetic risk for schizophrenia by adjusted MMPI indices.

The aim of this study was to find potential signs of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia. The differences between adoptees at high genetic risk for schizophrenia (their biological mother had a schizophrenia spectrum disorder) and control adoptees of non-schizophrenia spectrum biological mothers were assessed. The comparisons between these groups were based on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test's subscale scores adjusted by gender, age at MMPI assessment, age at placement into the adoptive family and social class.

Observing relationships in Finnish adoptive families: Oulu Family Rating Scale.

Adoption studies were intended to separate genetic from environmental "causal" factors. In earlier adoption studies, psychiatric diagnostic labels for the adoptive parents were used as a proxy for the multiple dimensions of the family rearing environment. In the Finnish Adoption Study, research design provided the opportunity to study directly the adoptive family rearing environment.

Predictors of schizophrenia: evidence from the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort and other sources.

Background: Subtle motor, emotional, cognitive and behavioural abnormalities are often present in apparently healthy individuals who later develop schizophrenia, suggesting that some aspects of causation are established before overt psychosis.

Aims: To outline the development of schizophrenia.

Method: We drew on evidence from The Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort supplemented by selected findings from other relevant literature.

Predictors of schizophrenia--a review.

Schizophrenia is an aetiologically heterogeneous syndrome that usually becomes overtly manifest in adolescence and early adulthood, but in many cases subtle impairments in neurointegrative function are present from birth; hence it is considered to be a disorder with a neurodevelopmental component. The strongest risk factor that has been identified is familial risk with genetic loading. Other risk factors include pregnancy and delivery complications, infections during pregnancy, disturbances of early neuromotor and cognitive development and heavy cannabis use in adolescence.

Interaction of genetic risk and adoptive parent communication deviance: longitudinal prediction of adoptee psychiatric disorders.

Background: In the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia, adoptee thinking disorders have been shown to be a joint effect of genetic liability for schizophrenia spectrum disorders and adoptive rearing-parent communication patterns. However, longitudinal predictions of clinical psychiatric disorders of the adoptees have not been reported.

Method: Adoptees (n = 109) who had no DSM-III-R disorder at initial assessment (median age 18 years) were selected from the total sample of the Finnish Adoption Study of Schizophrenia.

Psychometric deviance measured by MMPI in adoptees at high risk for schizophrenia and their adoptive controls.

Psychometric deviance in personality traits as assessed by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Dahlstrom, Welsh, & Dahlstrom, 1982) was compared between adopted-away, high-risk (HR) offspring of schizophrenic biologic mothers and low-risk (LR) controls. A subsample of the Finnish Adoptive Family Study (Tienari et al., 2000) included 60 HR adoptees and 76 LR control adoptees who were tested by the MMPI before the onset of any psychiatric disorder at the mean age of 24 years.