TomCat, that is great that he is healthy! Was it scary having a baby?
Thank you for commenting, it means a lot to me.
My grandmas sister and brother (my aunt and uncle) on my moms side have it. I also have a friend whose mom and uncle have it. It’s so rare you don’t have to worry about it but if I may say so you should love this guy enough to have kids with him. They don’t have to be his kids.
I am the only known member of my family with schizophrenia, but my sister and niece have Bipolar.
No, I hadn’t been diagnosed yet when I had my son so I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But I am still thankful now.
Mental illness runs in both sides of my family. I have an aunt who has schizophrenia, my father has schizoaffective disorder like me and they are just 2 out of 9 siblings. They had a cousin too who had it but she killed herself young so no children. That I know of my brother and I are the only ones out of 24 cousins that have mental illnesses. I have schizoaffective disorder and my brother is bipolar and our mom has major depression.
Hi Jen, There is lots of mental illness on one side of my family and a couple people with congenital disorders that have nothing to do with mental illness and were spontaneous genetic changes.
Having children is always a matter of luck as there are many heritable and non-heritable disorders that a child can be born with.
Good luck to you in your decision making.
The way it works is that if there are no members, the odds are somewhere around 1 in 100. With a case outside the immediate family, it’s about 1 in 50 for him. Not for his children, that’s important. If you have an immediate family member, say a parent or a sibling, it could be up to 1 in 10.
If your twin has schizophrenia it’s 1 in 2. For a great aunt i’m sure at the very worst it might be something like 1 in 90-95.
Keep in mind that schizophrenia does not really have a single genetic cause. It’s a number of things that contribute to it. It’s not like say my dad has brown hair. I have the brown hair gene. (Originally I said blue without thinking because it was the first color that came to mind haha)
I don’t know exactly how it works, i’m not a geneticist, but based on what i’ve read it doesn’t seem implausible that you could have two patients who don’t share any of the same affecting genes and develop schizophrenia. Those genes get all mixed up when you do a baby. It’s not like a grab bag where you accidentally go fuck I got schizophrenia. There really is a lot that goes into it, and environmental factors play a huge part in who develops the illness. Patterns of drug use, child abuse, post traumatic stress disorder, these things can be environmental triggers that cause someone who may have a genetic propensity for the illness. Now i’m not saying you can’t have a great life and suddenly become sick one day, but there is a decent amount of correlation to an especially trying childhood.
Bipolar also has a very strong genetic correlation to schizophrenia, and immediate family members with that illness increase the likelihood someone will develop schizophrenia. Autism as well, but only so slight.
Saadiqah, it’s strange that you and your sister have these problems, but no one else in the previous generations. Such a coincidence!
MisterWaffles, thank you for your reply. I agree, if you trust the statistics, the risks don’t seem to be that high. Although it worries me that most often it is just this one quite old article being cited with regards to hereditary risks (I think it’s dated 1973). Couldn’t it be outdated or inaccurate?
I also agree that there are so many diseases to worry about, but one thing is when you worry that something bad might happen, some bad illness or else, and the other - that your child might inherit a particular disease from you or your partner.
my experience jen but I live in east Europe in a small country where the people are messing strongly between them and this causes some genetic illnesses… in my case I am from mixed family,my mother is from another country than my father but my father was aggressive towards her and my sister for all his life…he wasn’t diagnosed,he had a good job,he was even the boss there but his violence was too pathological I think…he beated my sister at her 5 years once…and it was really bad violence…he beated my mom with hours for example :(… and in his 50ths something happened to him and he started drinking…notby pleasure but to relieve himself from something. the doctors couldn’t diagnose him well. they thought about depression, than ‘‘reactive psychosis’’ etc but he only liked the benzos and finally died of them cause mixing with alcohol…I suffered psychically as long as I remember myself…I don’t hallucinate also but I am angry,sad,a little bit delirious,i cant think well and really jealous of others…I have two diagnosis-the pdoc of my father told that I am borderline, my ex pdoc told me that I am a paranoid schizophrenic with mainly negatives symptoms…and since then,for my mother,ive herited the madness of my father…Ive also abused with a weed in the past…
I live so recluse since years that I know only the illness now…and I ended by communicating only with ill friends…and 2 of them are schizophrenics with,for both of them, a schizophrenic parent too… but they grew up in a real misery and some pdocs think that this could be a cause of the illness…my third friend is schizophrenic also but has no a direct ill parent…she is from an intellectual family etc and thinks she is god when she is in crisis…but she has a cousin with schizophrenia I think…
that’s all from me… I just wanted to say that I never talked really much,since child. I was calm and quite an autistic child…which is not really typical for schizophrenia…the diagnosis of autism is not for me I think but the most of the schizophrenics begin to show the symptoms at the puberty or even later but for me I had shame,guilt,sadness,loneliness,dumbness of the feelings really early in my life…
take care jen. ill get through my madness one day I think 
I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s his aunt, who didn’t pass down any genes to him at all. If your child did get schizophrenia, it would be a case of really bad luck, the same sort of bad luck that could cause any others of your child’s genes to be abnormal and cause a big struggle. If you and your boyfriend ever get to a point in your lives when you’re both really ready and wanting to have children, I say go for it. Even in the very unlikely even that your child did develop schizophrenia, it would be a battle your child was meant to face, and it sounds like you would be the strong, loving mother to see him through it.
Also consider my younger brother and myself. There is a heavy history of severe mental illness in our blood lines, especially our paternal line. Our own father had a psychotic illness (never diagnosed, he wound up homeless and off the radar due to alcoholism and being very violent/uncooperative before we were even adults, even now when we get him into centers for treatment, he leaves every single time). But that is a direct descendant scenario, plus we have multiple grandparents with psychosis, one confirmed paranoid schizophrenia.
Yet, while I have symptoms, my brother doesn’t. He gets some occasional anxiety and insomnia, but other than that, he’s on top of his game in every aspect of his life, very high functioning and successful in life. He’s a really good soul, too, and has already made a difference in many people’s lives, and he is only 25. Would be a shame if he had never been born just because of the risk.
You’re from a mixed family because your parents are from different countries? That makes no sense in why you have the illness.
Second, violence is not a symptom of schizophrenia, your father could just be violent by a bad upbringing and not because he was schizophrenic.
I think you’re really confused here Anna, none of this relates to schizophrenia inheritance.
Edit: You can pin point that the stress your father caused you triggered the illness but I’m almost positive here you didn’t inherit your fathers problems. It’s just not how it works.
yes,i am quite confused still I know… but my father made three times a psychiatry,its not nothing,no? I am still influenced by my mother who still thinks that my father was ill too…sorry…
He could have something… I’m not saying otherwise, I just don’t think you inherited anything from him. And since you joined I think you might be more borderline than schizophrenic too actually. That doens’t mean meds don’t help, they actually do. I have a friend who is borderline and takes zyprexa too, and it helps her a lot. I think you should try and go to therapy, because borderline is treatable with therapy. It could help your negative symptoms as well, therapy helps even dealing with positive symptoms which you don’t have.
Have you considered asking for a new diagnosis? I have a hard time believing you have sz to be honest.
yes I think that too sometimes… but in the past,i couldn’t feel love,pleasure…I don’t know if its typical for the borderline… the lack of emotions is more like schizophrenic thing…but yes,you could be right…and yes,zyprexa helps me at small doses
Not really, no. It can be depression, it can be a bunch of other things. The negative symptoms of the illness can exist on their own without the illness. And you don’t have positive symptoms, you do have paranoia but I also know a lot of paranoid people that don’t have sz.
yes,ok… so I live in a fucked up country cause they treated me for schizophrenia for 7 years and I didn’t got better with this pdoc…I lived in hell with some of her meds…
Go get a second opinion, doctors make mistakes. You shouldn’t suffer for it, really.
Hi Anna. What I have honestly noticed in some of your posts, is that you express a lot of emotions (sadness, loneliness, anger, anxiety, despair) but then deny you have any emotions. That is a form of disassociation, emotionally, and is common with BPD. People with BPD often have so much intense, negative emotion that it overwhelms them and they disassociate from it, and feel as though they have no emotion - but it’s actually because they have so much unbearable emotion that it’s hard to handle. Just something I noticed. Your mother’s verbal and emotional abuse that you have described, that sort of abuse can often be a big part in a child developing BPD by the time they are an adult, if they are already vulnerable to developing it. I agree with Minnii that therapy might be able to help you.
@Anna10 s mother refuses to help her go to therapy.