Poor performance at school could indicate an increased risk of later developing schizophrenia, a study says

British and Swedish researchers followed more than 900,000 children born between 1973 and 1983. The Psychological Medicine paper found getting an E grade in any GCSE-stage exam was linked to a doubling of the small risk of developing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia, which commonly causes people to hear voices and experience paranoid delusions, often becomes evident in the late teens or early 20s. The researchers, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, looked at Swedish data on exam results taken at the age of 15 or 16. They then looked at hospital data on admissions for psychotic disorders including schizophrenia after the age of 17. Sweden has comprehensive national registers, with every individual having their own identification code, so the data could be compared. The general risk for an adult to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in any given year is seven in 100,000. Getting an E grade in any of the 16 subjects looked at by the researchers was linked to a doubling of that risk. The researchers found those with the poorest school performance overall had four times that risk of developing schizophrenia when they were adults. Other studies have shown that there is a link between schizophrenia and earlier problems with learning or understanding.

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