both parents w/schizophrenia/mental health issues?

Children can indeed get schizophrenia. This is not common but it can happen. My partner's brother had schizophrenia by age 4 and Sheila Cantor wrote an excellent book on childhood schizophrenia and she had plenty of patients, I don't know why it is said to be so extremely rare. I have just met too many kids with it without even trying, for that to be the case. But while I would not say 'extremely rare' (1 in millions) I would not say 'common' (1 in 100). Somewhere in between. I don't feel schizophrenia has much at all to do with early environment. Studies today indicate it starts well before birth. Earlier guesses about 'environment' tended to center around the fact that even with one parent with it, the occurance is low. The only explanation was thought to be that it must be environmental. But there are a number of other simple explanations and the chief one is that there are many genes, not one gene. People have various reasons for disbelief in gene studies - I think mostly people feel 'genetic disease is hopeless' but schizophrenia is only hopeless when the illness is denied and treatment is not started. I think it is mostly genetic and a number of studies have shown that when children are adopted even immediately at birth, they develop schizophrenia at a fairly predictable rate. Evidence shows it is caused by the combined action of hundreds of genes, rather than 1 or 2, so it isn't 'inherited' like blue eyes or other simple traits where we envision one dominant gene - the occurance of it may also be linked not completely to genes that are inherited from mother or father in any way, but to genes that fold over of duplicate wrong during early development once the fetus is formed. I don't think early mistreatment causes schizophrenia, though it certaintly doesn't help. Kids and adults with a chronic mental health problem need above all, trust and confidence and stable support, and they don't get that in negative situations. Poor family situations also delay diagnosis and increase the length of 'DUP' (duration of untreated psychosis) which is a key factor in how well things come out. The thing is though, 'predicting' and 'rates' are all about groups of people and general trends, not individuals. There isn't any way to tell if your individual child will get schizophrenia. Statistics are only general trends in large groups of people. That said, more children get schizophrenia when both parents have the illness, than if one parent has it or neither has it. The rate in the general population is about 1% (lifetime adjusted risk, kind of a statistic but it is helpful). When one parent has it, studies usually give a percentage of 10-14%, and when both have it, studies vary in the result because the designs of the studies are so different, but yes, the rate is higher. It still doesn't say if YOUR child will get it. My partner's brother, mother, grandmother were very severely ill with it, talk about loading the dice, and he does not have it. That said, he remains somewhat shy and reserved, and can't take a lot of stress, for example, he couldn't publish and teach and failed to get tenure. But no one would say he has schizophrenia. Still I have a great variety of friends who do have this illness - one is a professional graphics artist, one is the head of a teaching program for the local network of teaching hospitals and speaks all over the world on schizophrenia. I am SURE...the good out comes are from consistent and early treatment, as soon as symptoms started. Not everyone gets a mild case of it and some people's lives are more limited than others. It's important to have reasonable expectations and for example not pressure a kid that he must have a career as a doctor or lawyer if he has a more severe illness, but love, a decent quality of life, these can always happen. All it takes is lots of work. I think the most important thing, is to always be very hopeful and positive. Modern medicines are very good and people tend to do very, very well as long as one doesn't put off treatment - most cases (65%) these days are moderate or mild (according to another study). Being in denial or discounting symptoms is a big, big mistake. It is far better to go in and ask a psychiatrist and find out for sure. Since it will show on some of the new MRI's or PET scans that is also a possible diagnosis route. If you do at some point think you're seeing symptoms, sit down and talk very openly with the child and be very accepting and positive, 'well, good girl for telling me, those are hallucinations, there's a medicine for that, we'll get that medicine and get on about our business, we can handle this'. The thing is to not be afraid of the symptoms, whether they occur in an adult or child. I recall years ago reading that a little seven year old boy came up to his mom and sat in her lap and stared into her eyes and asked in a frightened voice, 'why are people's faces always changing?' the mother said they DON'T change and he never spoke to her again about it! Then when the symptoms later turned out to be schizophrenia as a teen and young man he could never face it or accept any treatment, so he became more and more ill and the story did not end well. Instead, say, 'Tell me son, how do they change?', and listen and thank them for telling you. Rest assured, if they tell you they see something, they are seeing it, all research indicates they do indeed see and hear what they say they see and hear! In a family where psychiatry is openly discussed, such as a family where a mom is a psychiatric nurse or dad volunteers at the local residential facility, a person might feel more comfortable sharing his symptoms. Little bits of symptoms may come and go in childhood and never occur again, or they may develop into schizophrenia. Some doctors feel early treatment at the first small signs will prevent it from ever becoming full blown, so pushing any concerns away or discounting them, is not a good idea. Talk to a psychiatrist if you have concerns - I will probably anger some by saying psychologists and GP's are not equipped, but I strongly believe this after many decades of working with schizophrenics and listening to family's accounts of how things went. Too many psychologists have said to me, 'Oh he's just troubled over xyz' or 'it's the family dynamics'. There is usually NOTHING wrong with the family dynamics. People often tend to concentrate only on the hallucinations or delusional thinking, but schizophrenia is an illness that affects the brain in other ways. Coordination, memory, planning, drive and trust are often affected. Infants who later get schizophrenia often are born with low muscle tone, though that is not a specific sign. They may have trouble reaching and grasping, they may even crawl lopsidedly or in one direction more...also not a specific sign. They may not move through the 'close the eyes and reach' to the normal grabbing stages with the eyes open. But it's usually when people look back over the years that they say...'oooh...so THAT'S why he used to do that'. Children who get schizophrenia often going from low muscle tone at birth to normal muscle tone and back again to low tone and poor posture right before they become ill. If they do get schizophrenia very young, the commonest reason for taking them to a psychiatrist is often serious sleep problems. Parents have also often told me their soon-to-be schizophrenic child disliked swings or rocking horses or any toy that moved them backward. One doctor once wrote that the commonest thing for such kids to say is, 'can we go home yet?' They may have 'temper tantrums' that don't seem to end, such as crying inconsolably for hours after a very slight disappointment. They may have 'extremes' of behavior - or seem like a regular kid one day and do strange things the next day. It can be very hard to explain one's concerns to a relative who may say, 'but that's NORMAL for a kid!' without understanding the intensity or rigidity of the behavior that you're seeing. For example, I saw a film of one kid who spent all afternoon sobbing because 'the sun came in the window and hit me in the eye!' My friend's son with schizophrenia came home at age seven, sobbing because he 'was not invited to the valentines day party'. I mean SOBBING. His poor mom stomped right up to the teacher the next day demanding to know why her son was excluded. 'WHAT PARTY?' said the teacher. The boy was NOT making it up. He had been observing the other children and misinterpreted their conversations because he had delusional thinking. Often it starts like that. Things that could be reasonable. In fact, when my friend's husband became sick (as an adult) she was CONVINCED by his accounts of the events, that everyone at work was picking on him. But as time went on the ideas got odder and odder and less likely. WHAT they get upset about, WHAT they say is happening, just depends on what's around them...an adult will complain the IRS is persecuting him, a child will say teenage mutant ninja turtles are after him, but it's the same kind of feeling, terrible fear and anxiety. The world seems to change and things don't look right, it seems like the whole world is playing tricks on you, talking about you, laughing at you, whispering about you. I once visited a play group with several schizophrenic kids and found I was beseiged by 'leaners', LOL. That's another thing I've noticed with kids who get sick. Every one of those adorable kids was leaning all over me. Some feel they do that due to low muscle tone. I just feel they want someone to lean on :) Some people say children get more visual hallucinations than adults do - I'm not sure but I know they often are less guarded about discussing it. With a kid, you often have to teach them to STOP chattering about the cats and the numbers and the ghosts and PLEASE set the table! People who aren't experiencing the symptoms usually react with either horror or boredom or they ARGUE with the person or child! Never argue, listen. You don't have to agree, if asked if you hear it or see it, you can say, 'no, I never had that, but I'd like to understand how it is for you'. DON'T argue. They ARE seeing it and feeling it. If a person tells me they fear something irrational, I use it as a chance to build some trust. So for example when one patient insisted hot tap water was 'poison', I smiled at him and ran the cold water. 'Here you are, I think you prefer it cold'. End of argument, start of trust. When a patient insisted a lunch worker was poisoning him, I said, 'Well let's just start working toward you getting your apartment, you can't sit around and be dependent on someone to make you lunch, right?' But when these things like this happen, you do have to start thinking about the accumulated impressions all around you and how things are going, and if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it's probably a duck. And the only real response is to call a psychiatrist and make an appointment. Visual hallucinations might start off as bright flashes or streaks, they're often light in a dark area or dark if the child is in a brightly lit area. Sometimes they look like flying specs or lumps. Sound hallucinations might start off sounding like a swish, clash or scraping sound. Sometimes they sound like whispers, one fellow told me his first hallucination sounded like a very faint slamming door. Hallucinations can occur in any sensory form - sometimes a person feels like they are being pushed or itchy or crawly sensations on the skin(a 'competer', like a terry cloth wrist sweat band, can lessen that). Everyone has to learn to not be distracted by hallucinations - the person with the illness as well as the family. I read one mother wrote, 'you don't REALLY thinkk that's going to get you out of setting the table, DO YOU?' and medication really helps to tame them and make them not seem so absorbing. Sometimes the voices are very mean and everyone needs a lot of support in those cases - ''dumb old mean thing''. Talking back to the hallucination calmly can help too, 'okay, okay, take it easy'. The accusations can be awful - sinfulness, the person is gay, dirty, should die...don't let it alarm you. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. It's just symptoms. It is not who the person is. It's just that brain misfiring. What their symptoms are is NOT their fault. Learning to manage them IS. Too, symptoms can increase when schedule changes pop up which stress the person. Having to make a lot of decisions and getting a lot of pressure tends to make the symptoms worse too. Many people will have no noticeable symptoms in childhood, some will have a few and then none again til adulthood. It's thought that growth of the brain 'uncovers' the defects in the growth of the nerve cells at key periods of fast growth in life. The disease may start with depression, with hallucinations or with a period of very subtle odd thinking and ideas. Some teens and young adults turn to street drugs or alcohol when they start to become ill - they don't know what to do and they may not feel comfortable discussing how they feel or asking for psychiatric help. Often they don't realize they're becoming ill at all. As one patient told me, 'It's hard to bite your own teeth, ya know'. The brain just is not good at telling when the brain is ill. And please...do not listen to people who say children can't get mental illness. They can and they do. The key with schizophrenia is giving the child or adult that message right from the start - we're going to handle this thing.