The purpose of the Family Study Core is to establish a specialized study center for the comprehensive investigation of family members of schizophrenic patients and two control groups, remitted unipolar depressives and non-psychiatric medical patients. The Family Study Core will be utilized by the projects in genetic linkage and segregation, and those related to the development of candidate genes. The core will be responsible for he recruitment of family members for all studies and will centralize the collection of data from relatives. It will also conduct blind, comprehensive diagnostic interviews (direct, informant and family history) with relatives from each group to identify the presence of major DSM III-R axis I and axis II disorders and associated characteristics, symptoms, and features. Final diagnostic ratings will be determined at a diagnostic consensus meeting run by a diagnostic expert blind to proband diagnosis using all available sources of information. The core will oversee the collection of blood samples to be used for cell line immortalization. It will also arrange the scheduling of relatives to be assessed for eye-tracking and backward masking and continuous performances task. The diagnostic data will be stored in two general ways. First, all ratings of every symptom with associated assessments of severity will be stored in an highly flexible database using the INGRES database management system. Included in this database will be brief descriptive notes and comments as needed. Second, diagnostic narratives will be written by the direct rater taking into account all the information collected from all sources (direct, informant and family history interviews, medical records, etc.). These narratives are a detailed description of an individual's personality, behavior, thinking, interpersonal experiences, life problems and important life experiences. The purpose of the narrative is to facilitate the independent assessment and future novel analyses.
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