COULD soaring levels of schizophrenia among Afro-Caribbean people in the UK be caused by family separations?
A team led by Paul Fearon and Craig Morgan of the Institute of Psychiatry in London found that out of 568 people with psychoses in England, Afro-Caribbeans were nine times as likely to have schizophrenia as white Britons.
In another study, the team found that both white Britons and Afro-Caribbean people in England were two to three times as likely to suffer from psychoses if they had been separated from a parent during childhood. Since absent parents are more common in Afro-Caribbean families, the researchers suggest this could explain the higher rates of psychoses (Psychological Medicine, vol 36, p 1541, and DOI: 10.1017/S0033291706009330).
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The findings reopen the debate about the relative roles of genes and environment in schizophrenia. 鈥淭hey point quite strongly to environmental factors,鈥� says Morgan.
鈥淭he findings reopen the debate about the relative roles of genes and environment鈥�
