title: Parental communication deviance and affective style. Predictors of subsequent schizophrenia spectrum disorders in vulnerable adolescents.
abstract: In an attempt to assess the contributory role of family factors to the development of schizophrenia-like disorders, measures of parental communication deviance and affective styles of communication were obtained for a sample of families of disturbed but nonpsychotic adolescents. Outcome was assessed five years later. Absence of a pathologic affective style was associated with a benign outcome, but neither parental variable alone allowed precise identification of the schizophrenia-spectrum cases. However, an index using a combination of both variables was statistically predictive of subsequent psychiatric status at follow-up. Thus, adolescents whose parents had both a pathologic affective style of communication and a high level of communication deviance had schizophrenia-like disorders develop in young adulthood. Adolescents of parents who had both lower levels of communication deviance and a benign affective style had offspring with healthier outcomes.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000209:etiology; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology