Children of Parents Hospitalized for Mental Illness

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Abstract
Based on the literature regarding schizophrenia, it has been expected that aspects of attentional disorder would be communicated from parent to offspring, leading to increased vulnerability or “risk” for the development of thought disorder among such families. However, comparing groups of children of schizophrenic, depressed, and well mothers across early and middle childhood, differences, overall, across these three groups of families were less striking than had been expected, including patterns of interaction between mother and child in a structured teaching task. While evidence was found of a significant but subtle disorder of attention, greatest vulnerability consistently appeared among children of depressed mothers.