Poor School Performance Link to Schizophrenia

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 Hilary Caprani, Rethink

Sweden has comprehensive national registers, with every individual having their own identification code, so the data could be compared.

The general risk for an adult to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in any given year is seven in 100,000.

Getting an E grade in any of the 16 subjects looked at by the researchers was linked to a doubling of that risk.

The researchers found those with the poorest school performance overall had four times that risk of developing schizophrenia when they were adults.

Other studies have shown that there is a link between schizophrenia and earlier problems with learning or understanding.