Patterns of illness in parent-child pairs both hospitalized for either schizophrenia or a major mood disorder.

Results are reported of a blind rediagnosis of a consecutive series of parent-child pairs hospitalized with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or mood disorder. Patterns of illness in pairs meeting DSM-III-R criteria for either disorder were examined by contrasting the two generations on their respective distributions of diagnoses, and means of age at onset and severity of illness. While no case of mood disorder was found in the children of schizophrenic parents, 50% of the children of parents with psychotic mood disorders presented with schizophrenia. The offspring also had an earlier age at onset of illness than did their parents.