Pre-morbid IQ in mental disorders: a Danish draft-board study of 7486 psychiatric patients.
BACKGROUND
Longitudinal studies indicate that future schizophrenia patients exhibit lower IQ than healthy controls. Recent studies suggest that future patients with other mental illnesses obtain lower pre-morbid IQ. The aims of this study were to compare pre-morbid IQ among five diagnostic categories and normal controls, to examine the distribution of pre-morbid IQ, and to investigate the relationship between pre-morbid IQ and risk of mental illness.


METHODS
A total of 7486 individuals hospitalized with psychiatric disease and 20 531 controls. IQ was measured at the draft board and hospital diagnoses [schizophrenia (Sz), non-schizophrenic, non-affective psychoses (NSAP), affective (AD), personality (PD) and neurotic/stress disorders (ND)] were followed up to ages 43-54 years. Individuals hospitalized < or = 1 year after appearing before the draft board were excluded.


RESULTS
All future patients obtained significantly lower pre-morbid IQ than controls (3-7 IQ points), AD had the highest IQ and PD the lowest. In each diagnostic category, decreasing IQ was associated with an increasing risk of becoming a patient [odds ratios (ORs) 0.5-2.5 over the full IQ spectrum]. IQ distributions was nearly normal and uni-modal.


CONCLUSIONS
IQ deficits in each diagnostic category may reflect different functional patterns and temporal vicissitudes of the specific pathogenetic processes involved in different mental disorders.
Urfer-Parnas
A
A
University Department of Psychiatry, Hvidovre Hospital, 2605 Brøndby, Denmark. annickurferparnas@dadlnet.dk
Lykke Mortensen
E
E
Saebye
D
D
Parnas
J
J
D000328:Adult; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003718:Denmark / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D008875:Middle Aged; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D015995:Prevalence; D012042:Registries; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index