DSM-III-R personality disorders in parents of schizophrenic patients

This study examines the frequency of DSM-III-R personality disorders in parents of 58 patients who were admitted consecutively to a New York State psychiatric hospital with a first admission for a schizophrenia-like psychosis. For comparison, a control group of 65 families were randomly recruited who were in the same age group and denied any psychiatric history in their immediate families. Significantly more parents of the patients had a diagnosed personality disorder than controls. These were classified as schizoid, schizotypal, histrionic, and sadistic types by DSM-III-R criteria. While paranoid personality disorder was frequent, it was equally distributed among both groups of parents. These data suggest that the genetic boundaries to a "schizophrenia spectrum" disorder may extend further than previously thought and particularly the specific characteristics that are common to a wide variety of these disorders need to be examined in further analyses.