[Anomalies of character in the families of childhood schizophrenics].

The families of 124 children suffering from infantile schizophrenia were examined. The disease course was unfavourable (continuously or paroxysmally progressing schizophrenia) in 58, and relatively favourable (paroxysmal) in 66 children. In both groups 246 parents and 43 sibs were examined. On comparing the family backgrounds of these two forms of infantile schizophrenia it was found that secondary psychoses could be encountered only in the families of children with the paroxysmal (progressing and non-progressing) schizophrenia, and comprised 7.9% of the cases in the first, and 19.1% in the second group. "Effaced" forms of psychoses were also prevalent among the parents of the children of the second group (30.5% versus 14.0% in the first group). Some qualitative differences were discovered also in the anomalies of the parents' character: schizoid personalities of sthenic constitution were encountered twice as more frequently among the parents of the first-group, rather than the second-group children (25.2 versus 11.5%, respectively). "Defective" personalities and asthenic schizoids were found only among the parents of the first-group children, and comprised, respectively, 19.1 and 12.1%. Only among the parents of the second-group children there were hyperthymic personalities (16.8%). The risk of falling ill with schizophrenia appeared to be high also in the sibs of the second-group children (25.9%), as compared with those of the first-group children (12.5%).