Academic Performance in Children of Mothers With Schizophrenia and Other Severe Mental Illness, and Risk for Subsequent Development of Psychosis: A Population-Based Study.
OBJECTIVE
We examined the academic performance at age 12 years of children of mothers diagnosed with schizophrenia or other severe mental illness using a large whole-population birth cohort born in Western Australia. We investigated the association between academic performance and the subsequent development of psychotic illness.


METHOD
The sample comprised 3169 children of mothers with severe mental illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar major depression, delusional disorder or other psychoses; ICD-9 codes 295-298), and 88 353 children of comparison mothers without known psychiatric morbidity. Academic performance of children was indexed on a mandatory state-wide test of reading, spelling, writing and numeracy.


RESULTS
A larger proportion of children (43.1%) of mothers with severe mental illness performed below the acceptable standard than the reference group (30.3%; children of mothers with no known severe mental illness). After adjusting for covariates, children of mothers with any severe mental illness were more likely than the reference group to perform below-benchmark on all domains except reading. For all children, poor spelling was associated with the later development of psychosis, but particularly for those at familial risk for severe mental illness (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.81; 95% CI for HR = 1.21, 2.72).


CONCLUSIONS
Children of mothers with a severe mental illness are at increased risk for sub-standard academic achievement at age 12 years, placing these children at disadvantage for the transition to secondary school. For children with familial risk for severe mental illness, very poor spelling skills at age 12 years may be an indicator of risk for later psychotic disorder.
['Lin|Ashleigh|A|', 'Di Prinzio|Patsy|P|', 'Young|Deidra|D|', 'Jacoby|Peter|P|', 'Whitehouse|Andrew|A|', 'Waters|Flavie|F|', 'Jablensky|Assen|A|', 'Morgan|Vera A|VA|']
D000124:Achievement D000328:Adult D001714:Bipolar Disorder D002648:Child D016241:Child of Impaired Parents D003865:Depressive Disorder, Major D004521:Educational Measurement D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D009035:Mothers D011618:Psychotic Disorders D012306:Risk D012559:Schizophrenia D014904:Western Australia
academic performance schizophrenia psychosis familial risk at-risk genetic risk linked data neurocognition population psychiatric disorder