AT ISSUE - ARE TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES SCHIZOPHRENOGENIC

Schizophrenia is apparently less common in traditional than in nontrad itional societies, and the course of illness in these cultural setting s may also be more benign. Viral, political, economic, social labeling , and other explanations have been offered over the years for these di fferences. In contrast to those ideas that suggest the presence of a s chizophrenogenic stress in urbanized, Westernized populations, I propo se that traditional societies are actually schizophrenogenic compared with nontraditional societies. Assuming a multifactorial threshold mod el for the development of schizophrenia, traditional societies may be characterized by a lower threshold for developing schizophrenia in at- risk individuals. In the short term, this leads to a greater proportio n of all clinical cases being of a less severe variety; in the long te rm, genes predisposing individuals to develop schizophrenia are expose d to the effects of negative selection, ultimately resulting in a rela tively lower level of overt schizophrenia in these populations. The gr eater social demands placed on individual actors in traditional societ ies and the lack of variability in social network size may contribute to the (relatively) schizophrenogenic environment.