Own Study

Mental and physical disease in parents and sibs

Enquiries were made at all the psychiatric departments and hospitals in the districts in which the parents of the patients had lived, to see if they had ever been admitted for mental disorder. Information concerning mental disease among the sibs was gathered from the relatives of the patients, the patients themselves or the patients' hospital records. The same applied to information regarding physical disease among parents and sibs. The parents of 4 patients born outside Sweden were excluded, and also those of a 5th patient, for no reliable information could be obtained in this case. All in all, this analysis covered the 76 parents of 38 patients, and their 119 sibs born of the same mother.

This search revealed the following: Case 3: mother admitted to psychiatric department and mental hospital for puerperal psychosis and severe anancasms. Case 7: mother mentally retarded (IQ unknown), sister had IQ of 66, and brother an IQ of 58-70 and a mental age of 9 (Point-Scale). Case 24: sister hospitalized under the diagnosis of postinfectious psychosis. Case 27: mother had been in a psychiatric department and mental hospital for a "neurotic depressive reaction". Case 29: mother had a mental age of 7.2 years (Point-Scale) and had consulted the out-patient services of a psychiatric department and a mental hospital. One brother had an IQ of 54 and one sister an IQ of 44. Case 30: father had stayed at a mental hospital for an endogenous mental depression. Case 31: a sister was backward (IQ unknown) and had attended a special class at school.

The only physical abnormalities of note among the mothers, fathers and sibs were epilepsy in one brother (case 21) and one sister (case 29) and an EEG of epileptic type and behavior disorder in one brother (case 29), all confirmed by hospital records.

Thus two parents and 5 sibs were retarded. In addition the mother in case 23 gave me the impression on personal examination of being backward, but only mildly so; her IQ was not measured. But only in cases 7 and 29 did relatives have an IQ below about 70. According to Akesson (1961) about 2 per cent of the Swedish population have IQ's below this level. Thus normally about 4 of the relatives of my patients should have been so retarded. The number found-5-does not differ significantly from this. If one only takes into account parents, however, there was only I parent with an IQ below 70 and, even if one considers the other mentally retarded parent, whose IQ was unknown, to have an IQ below 70, it gives only 2 parents with IQ's below this level, which can hardly be said to point to any over-representation of mental deficiency among parents. No family member included in this analysis showed any signs of transsexualism or any other sexual deviation.

In 4 cases (cases 7, 23, 29, 31) the patients and other members of their family had neurologic or mental disorders that might have had a common basis. In case 7 both the mother and sibs were retarded and the patient had a cerebrolesional syndrome and an abnormal EEG. The mother in case 23 was slightly retarded and showed signs of a cerebrolesional syndrome, and the son had an IQ of 81, and psychiatric signs of brain damage. In case 29, the mother and 2 sibs were retarded, I of the 2 sibs had frank epilepsy, and the patient had an IQ of 72 and an abnormal EEG. A sister in case 31 was slightly retarded, and the patient herself had an IQ of 84 and an abnormal EEG. It is not unlikely that brain damage lay behind all the disorders in these cases-the mental retardation, the cerebrolesional syndromes, the epilepsy and the abnormal EEG's. The possibility of a genetic factor in these 4 cases cannot be excluded.