Is Schizophrenia Always Genetic?

Aside from being a lifelong chronic disorder, schizophrenia is a mystery to researchers as its exact cause still remains undetermined. Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that makes people interpret reality abnormally or in a distorted manner. Symptoms include continuous or relapsing mental episodes of psychosis where the individual develops delusion, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking, eventually leading to apathy, social detachment, and decreased emotional expressions. 

There have been several theories on the causes of the disease, all of which mainly link the mental disorder to genetics, making schizophrenia a hereditary disorder. 

However, scientists have also found multiple postnatal environmental factors that can give rise to schizophrenia. 

1. Urban Environment

In a 1939 study by Robert E. L. Faris and H. Warren Dunham, the authors noted that “Schizophrenic cases, as in all mental disorders, are in the disorganized community at or near the center of the city, tending to decline toward the periphery.” 

In 2004, psychiatrists Spauwen J et al., looked at 10 different studies in their work: “Does urbanicity shift the population expression of psychosis?” and found that the rates of schizophrenia in urban areas are about twice the rate in rural areas. 

This shows that being raised in a city during early development in childhood and adolescence proved to be more crucial than moving to a city in adulthood. 

2. Substance Abuse

Numerous studies mention that substance abuse, particularly the use of marijuana plays an important role in the development of schizophrenia. The use of marijuana under the age of 21 (when the brain is still developing) leads to an even higher risk and excessive use has been associated with a 500 to 600 times increase in developing schizophrenia.

Substance abuse also makes treatment for schizophrenia less effective.

3. Vitamin D

The sun doesn’t feel sweet without reason. Vitamin D, which is mainly dependent on sun exposure, is a secosteroid hormone, recognized as a neuroprotective factor with a role to play in brain development. 

Epidemiological studies have indicated that “those born in late winter/early spring, at higher latitudes, and in urban settings have an increased risk of schizophrenia, leading to suggestions that this risk may be mediated by vitamin D deficiency.”

Vitamin D insufficiency is found to be highly prevalent in people with schizophrenia and many other psychotic disorders. 

Unlike many other incurable disorders, schizophrenia can be very well managed and lived with. Treatment can include different individual psychotherapies, cognitive behavior therapy, and also psychosocial therapies. 

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