Family characteristics, childhood symptoms, and adult outcome in schizophrenia.

Childhood-symptom factors were assessed for a sample of 43 male children, initially diagnosed as schizophrenic during the young-adult period, in terms of their relationship to parental factors. The parental factors plus additional family variables not derived by factor analysis were evaluated as predictors of outcome over a 22-year period extending from early to middle adulthood. Two maternal factors, mother anxious and mother neglect, were significantly related to adult outcome within this sample of schizophrenics. The maternal factors were differentially associated with paternal factors, global judgments of severity of family disturbance, and childhood symptoms. Path analysis indicated that the severityof-family-disturbance measure had substantial, direct effects on adult measures with minimal mediation by childhood symptoms. In general, the relationships among variables suggested two family patterns consistent with the literature. The authors suggest that sampling bias associated with family intactness may contribute to the discrepant results in the family literature as it relates to schizophrenia.