Acute stress in pregnancy can pass on schizophrenia: study

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — Pregant women subjected to traumatising stress are more likely to give birth to children who develop schizophrenia, according to a study published Thursday.

"The kind of stress in question are those that would be experienced in a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane, a terrorist attack, or a sudden bereavement," explained lead author Dolores Malaspina, a researcher at New York University's School of Medicine.

Schizophrenia is a complex brain disorder, characterised by delusions and hallucinations, that usually strikes in late adolescence or early adulthood -- and with often devastating results.

Malaspina and her colleagues looked at birth data for 88,829 people born in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976 and cross-referenced it with...