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Twin studies in our understanding of schizophrenia?

Are there any flaws/ assumptions/ artifacts in the use of twin studies with reference to schizophrenia having a partial genetic basis?

John...
But aren't there issues of identity involved with identical twins, eg. how they see themselves, how they are treated. Their bond with each other... that goes right back into the womb!!

And in adoption studies... identical twins brought up seperately!? Why? What was going on in the family?

How many twins in the study?

The data doesn't have enough background about the families and environment?

1) In non-adoption studies, the twins obviously share the same family and therefore are subject to the same environment/background/upbringing, making it difficult to differentiate between genetic and environmental factors.

2) In twin adoption studies of schizophrenia the main problem is that they are of limited size (in terms of participants) and number (i.e. very few of them done), simply because of the complexity of requirements, which can effect their validity as a source for proving schizophrenia has a genetic basis.

I don't know if this is an "official" criticism of twin studies, but I imagine it could be the case that if one twin has schizophrenia, people would be more willing to see it in the other twin, even if he doesn't have the same severity of symptoms (which could arguably be down to social learning).

Hope this helps.

There's are two huge assumptions, applicable to all twin studies.

1. There is no difference in the way that parents etc treat identical twins versus non-identical twins.
2. There is no difference in the way identical twins treat each other versus non-identical.

These alone invalidate all twins studies for me.

There are some more here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rN1MZ...

Dont forget the studies comparing incidence rates in identical and non-identical twins.

The higher co-incidence in identical twins over non-identical twins seals the deal.

No there are not. These studies are very good, and yes they do show a poor link between genetics and schizophrenia. You must remember that studies do not cover every variable.

not that i know of and i did psychology at uni

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