Pursuit eye movement dysfunctions in schizophrenia. Family evidence for specificity.

In a number of previous investigations, eye tracking dysfunctions had been reliably found in from 50% to 85% of schizophrenic patients, about 40% of manic-depressive patients, and about 8% of the normal population. We report similar smooth pursuit eye movement dysfunctions in 34% of the parents (or 55% of parental pairs) of schizophrenic patients compared with 10% of the parents (or 7% of parental pairs) of manic-depressive patients. Parental eye movement dysfunctions are significantly related to the diagnosis of the patient and not to the patient's eye tracking performance. These data suggest that, in the absence of other CNS disease, these eye tracking dysfunctions represent familial markers of vulnerability to schizophrenia.

Symptoms and functioning of patients with bipolar disorder six months after hospitalization.

The relationship between symptoms and functioning of patients with bipolar disorder who were hospitalized for a manic episode was examined in a prospective study. At six-month follow-up, symptomatic outcome was clearly superior to functional outcome. Almost 80 percent of patients were symptom free or mildly symptomatic. However, only 43 percent of patients were employed, and only 21 percent were working at their expected level of employment. Thirty percent were rated as being unable to work. Additional analyses showed that 64 percent of the first-admission subjects were employed at some level at follow-up, compared with only 33 percent of subjects with multiple admissions. The results suggest that factors other than symptoms are related to the functioning of patients with bipolar disorder and that treatment should be targeted to the patient's disability as well to symptom amelioration.