Metabolic Studies in Childhood Schizophrenia

The relationship between the childhood and adult forms of schizophrenia has been discussed in a previous paper, 16 and the opinion was expressed that the two forms of the disease are probably the same basic process. This conclusion was based largely on the following two lines of evidence: 1. Bender 3 demonstrated in long-term follow-up studies that the majority of schizophrenic children become schizophrenic adults. 2. The basic psychopathology in adult and childhood schizophrenia as described by several workers is markedly similar. 5,14 Additional evidence is the demonstration by Kallmann and Roth 6 that schizophrenia occurs at approximately the same frequency in the immediate families of adult and "preadolescent" schizophrenics. In the search for metabolic abnormalities in schizophrenia, there are certain advantages to using children as research subjects. The chief advantages are as follows: 1. Since the disease is in its early stages, any metabolic