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"the same factors that increase your chance of getting diagnosed with schizophrenia also increase your chances of ending up in living in a deprived urban area"

"the same factors that increase your chance of getting diagnosed with schizophrenia also increase your chances of ending up in living in a deprived urban area" I wonder how much of this mystery is based on spurious correlation -- people with mental problems fleeing rural areas and moving to cities, other (social) factors that are more common in cities and influence the probability of developing a mental illness.

_rpd 10y ago
> people with mental problems fleeing rural areas and moving to cities Yes, although it is not easy, perhaps it is easier to live as a person with schizophrenia in an urban environment. Although inadequate, there are more likely to be some mental health services, and urbanites tend to encounter and tolerate a broader variety of human behaviors.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  Might be people suffering an episode of mania in a rural area pass unnoticed by the various authorities.
  - Hydraulix989 10y ago
    Yes, to me this seems like a misinterpretation of the data. Growing up in a small rural blue collar town in the wifi-less farm country outside of Pittsburgh, we had our fair share of "crazies" that everybody knew about -- the ominous rotting but not abandoned house up the road that everybody stayed away from because of unsettling rumors. These data points are easily overlooked or dismissed as local lore or "rural legends." If you've seen the movie Prisoners [2013], it's startlingly accurate in this aspect.
    - Gibbon1 10y ago
      Reminds me, my brother in law's dad was in the appraisal/real estate business. Mentioned once trying to figure out what to do about a guy in one of the houses he had paper on. He apparently had shot the windows of the house out from the inside. He was obviously armed, crazy and paranoid. In a city the police would have to do something about that guy. In rural Alaska, they can wait.
DanBC 10y ago
The article talks about that. > But none of this conclusively proves that cities cause schizophrenia and some argue the causal arrow actually goes round the other way. People with psychosis, the alternative explanation goes, are just more likely to end up living in poor city neighborhoods—something first labeled the ‘social drift’ hypothesis. [...] > . But we know this can’t explain what we see in modern studies because time spent in the city is also associated with your future chance of developing these experiences. A recent study led by Joanne Newbury at King’s College London even found this effect in children, who have little say where they live.
- stewbrew 10y ago
  The hypothetic example of "people with mental problems" was only part of my statement. The citation above doesn't cover mental problems as result of concentrated social deprivation you only see in cities.
gwern 10y ago
Some, but definitely not all. OP undersell Sariaslan's study, as you can tell by the title of it: "Schizophrenia and subsequent neighborhood deprivation: revisiting the social drift hypothesis using population, twin and molecular genetic data" http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v6/n5/full/tp201662a.html http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v6/n5/full/tp201662a.html The 'molecular genetic data' there refers to using schizophrenia GWAS hits to directly measure genetic schizophrenia risk and using individuals' genes to predict drift: > Third, we investigated to what extent polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia predicted residence in deprived neighborhoods during late adulthood using the TwinGene sample (n=6796)...the association between polygenic risk for schizophrenia and neighborhood deprivation was statistically significant (R2=0.15%, P=0.002). Our findings are primarily consistent with a genetic selection interpretation where genetic liability for schizophrenia also predicts subsequent residence in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods. Since schizophrenia genes cause getting diagnosed with schizophrenia, and also predict living in deprived urban areas, at least some of the common causation must be people's genes. I like Sariaslan's paper a lot, because of how overkill it is: he uses three independent methods and large datasets (one population-sized) to triangulate the same unexpected & unpopular result - it's pretty much impossible to dispute the drift hypothesis now. As GWASes continue to identify SNPs and create powerful polygenic scores, you can expect to see more of this: parallel confirmation of long-standing behavioral genetics results.

_rpd 10y ago

> people with mental problems fleeing rural areas and moving to cities Yes, although it is not easy, perhaps it is easier to live as a person with schizophrenia in an urban environment. Although inadequate, there are more likely to be some mental health services, and urbanites tend to encounter and tolerate a broader variety of human behaviors.

Gibbon1 10y ago
Might be people suffering an episode of mania in a rural area pass unnoticed by the various authorities.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  Yes, to me this seems like a misinterpretation of the data. Growing up in a small rural blue collar town in the wifi-less farm country outside of Pittsburgh, we had our fair share of "crazies" that everybody knew about -- the ominous rotting but not abandoned house up the road that everybody stayed away from because of unsettling rumors. These data points are easily overlooked or dismissed as local lore or "rural legends." If you've seen the movie Prisoners [2013], it's startlingly accurate in this aspect.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    Reminds me, my brother in law's dad was in the appraisal/real estate business. Mentioned once trying to figure out what to do about a guy in one of the houses he had paper on. He apparently had shot the windows of the house out from the inside. He was obviously armed, crazy and paranoid. In a city the police would have to do something about that guy. In rural Alaska, they can wait.

DanBC 10y ago

The article talks about that. > But none of this conclusively proves that cities cause schizophrenia and some argue the causal arrow actually goes round the other way. People with psychosis, the alternative explanation goes, are just more likely to end up living in poor city neighborhoods—something first labeled the ‘social drift’ hypothesis. [...] > . But we know this can’t explain what we see in modern studies because time spent in the city is also associated with your future chance of developing these experiences. A recent study led by Joanne Newbury at King’s College London even found this effect in children, who have little say where they live.

stewbrew 10y ago
The hypothetic example of "people with mental problems" was only part of my statement. The citation above doesn't cover mental problems as result of concentrated social deprivation you only see in cities.

gwern 10y ago

Some, but definitely not all. OP undersell Sariaslan's study, as you can tell by the title of it: "Schizophrenia and subsequent neighborhood deprivation: revisiting the social drift hypothesis using population, twin and molecular genetic data" http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v6/n5/full/tp201662a.html http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v6/n5/full/tp201662a.html The 'molecular genetic data' there refers to using schizophrenia GWAS hits to directly measure genetic schizophrenia risk and using individuals' genes to predict drift: > Third, we investigated to what extent polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia predicted residence in deprived neighborhoods during late adulthood using the TwinGene sample (n=6796)...the association between polygenic risk for schizophrenia and neighborhood deprivation was statistically significant (R2=0.15%, P=0.002). Our findings are primarily consistent with a genetic selection interpretation where genetic liability for schizophrenia also predicts subsequent residence in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods. Since schizophrenia genes cause getting diagnosed with schizophrenia, and also predict living in deprived urban areas, at least some of the common causation must be people's genes. I like Sariaslan's paper a lot, because of how overkill it is: he uses three independent methods and large datasets (one population-sized) to triangulate the same unexpected & unpopular result - it's pretty much impossible to dispute the drift hypothesis now. As GWASes continue to identify SNPs and create powerful polygenic scores, you can expect to see more of this: parallel confirmation of long-standing behavioral genetics results.