Childhood mental ability and dementia.

OBJECTIVE: To examine links between childhood mental ability and dementia using data from a 1932 survey of the mental ability of the 1921 Scottish birth cohort. METHOD: Patients with dementia from the 1921 Scottish birth cohort were located in 1) a national survey of early-onset dementia (1974-1988), 2) local mental health services, and 3) a survey of 264 of 519 surviving Aberdeen residents who took the 1932 test. Control subjects were identified in the 1932 Scottish Mental Survey. RESULTS: Mean 1932 ability score for the Scottish 1921 cohort did not differ from early-onset dementia. Early-onset dementia was not associated with lower childhood mental ability when compared with matched control subjects. In Aberdeen, mental ability scores were significantly lower in children who eventually developed late-onset dementia when compared with other Aberdeen children tested in 1932. This difference was also detected between cases and tested subjects (controls) alive in 1994. CONCLUSIONS: Late-onset dementia is associated with lower mental ability scores in childhood. Early-onset dementia mental ability scores did not differ from locally matched control subjects or from late-onset dementia. Mechanisms that account for the link between lower mental ability and late-onset dementia are probably not relevant to early-onset dementia.

The Nithsdale Schizophrenia Surveys. XV. Social adjustment in schizophrenia: associations with gender, symptoms and childhood antecedents.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between childhood social adjustment and personality and adult social adjustment and symptoms in a population of schizophrenic patients. Adult social adjustment was assessed in 43 patients by means of the Social Adjustment Scale Self-Report, and symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Subjective Deficit Syndrome Scale. Childhood social adjustment and personality were assessed by means of interviews with patients' mothers. Patients displayed poorer adult social adjustment than a normal population, but no significant differences existed between the sexes. A strong association was found between childhood and adult social adjustment in male subjects. Stronger correlations between social adjustment and current symptoms, particularly positive symptoms, were found in females than in males. Associations in males were stronger for negative symptoms. We observed significant correlations between poor adult social adjustment and severity of illness and abnormalities of personality and social adjustment in childhood. There were substantial differences between the sexes in these associations.

The Nithsdale Schizophrenia Surveys. XII. 'Neurodevelopmental' Schizophrenia: a search for clinical correlates and putative aetiological factors.

BACKGROUND: The aim was to examine in a population of schizophrenic patients the clinical correlates of 'neurodevelopmental' schizophrenia and their relationship to putative aetiological factors. METHOD: Premorbid social adjustment, premorbid schizoid and schizotypal personality traits, and the obstetric history of 40 schizophrenic patients and their 102 sibs were assessed through interviews with their mothers. Patients' premorbid level of intelligence was assessed by the National Adult Reading Test and current symptoms by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Subjective Deficit Syndrome Scale. RESULTS: Patients had more schizoid and schizotypal traits than their sibs. They showed a deterioration in social adjustment between childhood and adolescence; sibs' social adjustment improved. There were statistically significant associations between current negative schizophrenic symptoms, premorbid deterioration in social adjustment, and schizoid and schizotypal personality traits, and between an early age of onset of illness and the same premorbid assessments. There was no evidence that patients with a family history of severe mental illness leading to hospitalisation, or a history of definite obstetric complications, had poorer premorbid functioning or more severe current symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: We have confirmed clinical correlates of 'neurodevelopmental' schizophrenia but found no association between these and obstetric complications or a family history of severe mental disorder.

The Nithsdale Schizophrenia Surveys. XIII. Parental rearing patterns, current symptomatology and relatives' expressed emotion.

BACKGROUND: A population of adult schizophrenic patients was assessed to discover how the patients viewed their childhood, whether their view differed from non-schizophrenic adults, and to determine any association between parental rearing practices as perceived by the patient, childhood personality as perceived by the mother, and current symptoms. Type and level of expressed emotion shown by parents towards patients was also examined. METHOD: Parental attitudes, as perceived by 50 schizophrenic patients, were assessed by the EMBU scale. Patients' premorbid personality and social adjustment were assessed through interviews with patients' mothers by the Scale for the Assessment of Premorbid Schizoid and Schizotypal Traits and the Premorbid Social Adjustment Scale. Current symptoms were assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and Subjective Deficit Syndrome Scale. RESULTS: Patients saw little difference between fathers' and mothers' attitudes. There was a positive correlation between parental rejection and overprotection, and a negative correlation between rejection and warmth. There were no significant correlations between parental rearing attitudes and patients' childhood personality; there was a significant correlation between parental attitudes and current symptoms. Rejection and overprotection were associated with more severe, warmth with less severe symptoms, especially so for positive schizophrenic symptoms and general psychopathology. Although there was no association between the general level of expressed emotion shown by the parent towards the adult patient, and patients' perceived parental rearing attitudes, parents with high expressed emotion on the basis of hostility had higher rejection scores on the parental rearing attitudes scale. CONCLUSIONS: Schizophrenic patients saw their parents as showing much less warmth, and the severity of currents symptoms was associated with perceived parental rearing attitudes. The hostility component of high expressed emotion may be a parental trait which exists before the illness begins.