Life expectancy reduced in offspring of psychotic mothers

MedWire News: The offspring of women with psychotic disorders are more likely to die prematurely than those born to other women, researchers have found.
Dr Jaana Suvisaari, from the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues also found that this increased risk of death was evident until middle age and even affected offspring of women with psychotic disorders who did not develop such disorders themselves.
The researchers studied data on 337 offspring of women treated for schizophrenia and schizophrenia-type disorders in Helsinki before 1975. The participants were monitored from their 16th birthdays for an average of 28 years.
In total, 29 participants died during the monitoring period. Of these, 13 died from natural causes and 16 died from unnatural causes. Seven offspring committed suicide and two were victims of homicide.
Analysis revealed that, compared with death rates among people of the same age in the general population, the offspring of women with psychotic disorders were around two-and-a-half times more likely to die prematurely.
Even when excluding offspring who developed psychotic disorders themselves, the risk of early death among offspring with psychotic mothers was still 2.3 times greater than that among people of similar age in the general population, and this risk extended into middle age.
"Our current findings suggest that [offspring of psychotic mothers] have increased mortality risk from late adolescence until middle age, and that this is not limited to offspring who develop psychotic disorders," Dr Suvisaari and team summarise in the journal Psychological Medicine.
They add: "It may be that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is particularly difficult for some high-risk offspring, who would need support that would extend beyond adolescence. Currently, adolescent children of parents with schizophrenia are often left alone to deal with parental mental illness and its effects on everyday life, which extend from having to assume adult responsibilities in the family to feelings of fear related to the parent's symptoms.
"Developing support services for offspring of parents with psychotic disorder is an important challenge for mental health treatment systems."