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Mental Disorder and Season of Birth: Comparison of Psychoses with Neurosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

E. H. Hare  and
J. S. Price
E. H. Hare
Affiliation:
Bethlem Royal and the Maudsley Hospitals, London, S.E.5
J. S. Price
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Psychiatric Genetics Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London, S.E.5
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Extract

Barry and Barry (1961, 1964) have reviewed the evidence for an association between season of birth and the major psychoses. Their figures show that, with a single exception, every study has found an excess (though not always a significant excess) of schizophrenic and manic-depressive patients born between January and April, and a deficit born between May and August, compared with the control populations. The single exception was their own study (1964) on schizophrenic patients in private mental hospitals, a finding which led them to conclude either that the private class of patient is protected from some adverse seasonal influence or that schizophrenic patients come chiefly from a subgroup of the population which has a comparatively high birth rate during the first four months of the year. Norris and Chowning (1962) drew attention to the fact that the seasonal distribution of births in a general population may vary appreciably from year to year in a particular country and from place to place within that country in any one year, and suggested that such variations make difficult any comparison between births of patients and of a large general population taken over a number of years, the procedure which had hitherto been adopted.

Type
Environmental Effects
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 115 , Issue 522 , May 1969 , pp. 533 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1969 

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