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jv103 said: I see. I didn't know schizophrenia was so pinned down as I thought that it could 'onset' at any period. I'm surprised they know so much about that mental illness and mental illnesses in general. I think too often that causations are drawn, when they are probably correlations and confounding factors are ignored. I don't know though because I'm not a psych grad i student, my girlfriend is I should ask her -although she is behavioral/developmental. I guess I'm assuming that there is greater complexity to the mind and human nature than there actually is. I guess I just assumed that psychologists go into studies from a normative standpoint. Oh well. Too bad I'm not better versed.
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It is a lot of correlational studies, but you can get some very powerful information from that. For example there is a 30% (or possibly 50% I forget off-hand) that if one twin develops schizophrenia that the other will as well. Less than half of a percent of the normal population has the disorder so that clearly shows a strong connection to heredity. This also shows a strong connection to the environment, but that is nearly impossible to pin down as a variable.
Check out the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) if you want a better idea of where the field in general is at with mental disorders. There are a lot of issues with the DSM but it is still an extremely useful tool when used by a well trained psychologist. Not so useful for diagnosing people without the training admittedly, but it does show how far we have come in understanding mental illness as a whole.
