"Schizotaxia": Clinical implications and new directions for research

We sought to show that (1) schizotaxia (Meehl's term for the predisposition to schizophrenia) is a clinically consequential condition, and (2) disting uishing it from schizotypal personality disorder may be useful from both cl inical and scientific perspectives. We review the features of schizotaxia t hat may be relevant in clinical settings and discuss their implications for the diagnosis, psychosocial functioning, family intervention and treatment of people in schizophrenia families. Our review indicates that prior work finds some of the nonpsychotic and nonschizotypal relatives of schizophreni a patients to have a psychiatric syndrome characterized by negative symptom s, neuropsychological impairment, and psychosocial dysfunction, Following M eehl, we call this constellation of clinical and neurobiological features s chizotaxia, The studies we review suggest it may be worthwhile to consider schizotaxia as a separate diagnostic class. Doing so would alert clinicians to a neurobehavioral syndrome not adequately covered by current diagnostic criteria and would motivate researchers to develop diagnostic and therapeu tic approaches aimed at helping schizotaxic individuals and, perhaps, preve nting the onset of schizophrenia.