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Low marks could be linked to schizophrenia

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

But a mental health charity said the illness was often linked with high, rather than low, intelligence.

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. The people in the study might have had normal intelligence but started having low-level symptoms that disrupted their schooling. Sweden has comprehensive national registers, with every individual having their own identification code, so the data could be compared.

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