Psychiatric Morbidity among Parents of Schizophrenic Patients1

Parents of schizophrenic patients have frequently been thought of contributing pathogenic influences towards causation, occurrence, recurrence or progression of the disease. Lidz and his colleagues (1957) conducted an extensive enquiry about the parental characteristics of schizophrenics and observed 9 out of 15 families having a schizophrenic parents. Fleck, Lidz and Cornelison (1963) concluded that male schizophrenics came from skewed families and females from schismatic families. They vrerc of the view that schizophrenics in these families learnt inappropriate behaviour, achieved distorted sexual identification and became bound up in parental conflict. Double bind communication observed among the parents of the schizophrenics was another important contribution in this area (Bateson, 1956). Morris and Wynne (1965) made higher level of predictions by using extracts of recorded interview with parents of schizophrenics and non-schizophrenic psychiatric patients. Similarly several other investigators (Fischer el al., 1959 ; Singer and Wynne, 1966 ; Wynne, 1967 ; 1971) reported certain abnormal personality characteristics in the parents of schizophrenics.