But we know that many men aren't ready for marriage and parenthood at that age. A man may want to wait until he is mature enough and economically stable enough to have children, even though there are health risks involved in having children at an older age. The study is published in the April issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. A man has a biological clock, too. For fathers over age 50, two out of three cases of schizophrenia in their children could be attributed to the effects of paternal age.
Schizophrenia is a devastating brain disorder.
It is the most disabling of severe mental illnesses, afflicting about 1.1 percent of adults or about 2.2 million people in the United States, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Mysteriously, approximately the same percentage is affected in other countries. If schizophrenia were caused by environmental factors, then presumably the disease would only arise in certain parts of the world. While no one knows the cause of schizophrenia, it is suspected that many genes contribute to it. The researchers think the new study can shed some light on why the incidence of schizophrenia seems to be fairly constant in all populations over time.