Combining an adoption design and a longitudinal risk-research strategy, this long-term study has 5 main hypotheses and aims intended to examine: (1) genetic liability for both narrowly defined schizophrenia and a broader range of psychoses; (2) genetic liability for schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders; (3) test indices of vulnerability for schizophrenia; (4) joint effects of genotype, vulnerability, and adoptive family rearing; and (5) the contributions of preadoption environmental variables to later psychopathology. Earlier, a large Finnish national sample of adopting-away schizophrenic index/control mothers, index/control adoptees, and index/control adoptive families has been identified. Later, extensive clinical interviewing and psychological testing were undertaken with the adoptees and the adoptive families by interviewers blind as to index vs. control status. Preliminary findings strongly confirmed genetic effects for functional psychoses and DSM-III-R schizophrenia; environmental influences were also implicated in that severe disturbances were found primarily in adoptive families rated as having severe relational disturbances, but not in adoptees reared in 'healthy' adoptive families, even when biological adopting-away mothers were schizophrenic. Three main tasks are planned for the renewal grant period: (1) follow up study of (a) an estimated 256 adoptees further into the age of risk for schizophrenia, interviewed with structured personality schedules, and tested with Rorschach, MMPI, eyetracking, and attentional measures; (b) adoptive parents who were initially evaluated when the adoptees were young or living at home. (2) DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria will be systematically applied to all study subjects with both a Finnish and a cross-national diagnostic reliability exercise. (3) Extensive data analyses will evaluate each of the 5 major hypotheses, as well as possibly significant covariates. Comprehensive model building will be used to guide data analyses while assessing the main and joint effects of the principal variables under investigation.
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