Schizophrenia is a tragic, chronic, and disabling mental illness.
This illness typically strikes high-achieving young adults or adolescents suddenly, causing them to have hallucinations and disordered thinking, derailing their plans for education and career, and leading to a difficult and precarious life. We know that a vulnerability to schizophrenia is inherited because the illness tends to run in families. However, scientists are also finding evidence that some non-genetic influences very early in life, perhaps before birth, may also be involved in causing a person to have schizophrenia, even though the illness does not appear until many years later in adolescence or adulthood. This long delay may be related to the progression of normal changes throughout childhood and adolescence in the cells and structures making up the brain, especially the burst of developmental changes that occur during adolescence. MRI scans of the children s brains are being conducted at 2-year intervals.