Schizophrenia risk factors in exceptional achievers: a re-analysis of a 60-year-old database

Current medical research has focused on diseases and their associated risk factors. As such, these factors are assumed to have a deleterious effect. An alternative hypothesis is that some of these risk factors would also increase the chance for an opposite, positive outcome. To test this hypothesis, we considered exceptional social achievement and schizophrenia as opposite outcomes. Sixty years ago, researchers in France collected data on socio-demographic factors associated with exceptional social achievement. As the number of female subjects in the original database was very limited, we restricted our analyses to men. We tested the odds of achieving prominence in the presence of factors known to be associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia, namely migration, urbanicity, seasonality of birth, birth order, and paternal age. Three of the five factors tested significantly increased the odds for exceptional social achievement (urban birth, being the first-born and father’s age over 35). Our findings suggest that some of the factors that are currently considered as risk factors for schizophrenia could diversifying factors. Widening the focus of research to include all potential effects of factors associated with disease could have important consequences on our understanding of causal mechanisms and for designing public health interventions.