Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders: Social Factors

A number of social factors have been associated with the risk for schizophrenia, including adverse life events; substance use; racial, ethnic, or immigrant status; and contextual factors, such as population density. Interestingly, many of these social factors are related to much larger risks for the disorder than most biological factors that have been linked to schizophrenia, such as genes associated with the disorder. The following entry summarizes the main social factors related to increased risk for schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. It is now clear that the overlap in symptoms and risk factors between schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders (e.g., delusional disorder, schizophreniform) is large; therefore, many studies group these disorders together and commonly refer to these disorders as schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Therefore, this ...