Mysteriöser Zusammenhang zwischen Katzenbesitz und Schizophrenie ist real, heißt es in einer Studie

by Specific-Mongoose-93

28 comments

  1. “A new review suggests that having a cat as a pet could potentially double a person’s risk of schizophrenia-related disorders.

    Australian researchers conducted an analysis of 17 studies published during the last 44 years, from 11 countries including the US and the UK.

    “We found an association between broadly defined cat ownership and increased odds of developing schizophrenia-related disorders,” writes psychiatrist John McGrath and fellow researchers, all from the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research.”

  3. Are you crazy and then get cats or do have cats and then go crazy?

  4. Well, my cat is only a hallucination, so I guess I’m fine!

  5. I own 2 cats, and I think you can understand our concern.

  6. I love “broadly defined cat ownership”. I know exactly what they mean.

  8. More questionable mental health and social science research. Not convinced that this isn’t correlation lol

  9. This study is sus based on the balance of evidence. There’s also a strong link between death & shoes too…. I guarantee that every person who has ever worn any kind of shoe is going to die or has died. It’s a 100% correlation!

    The link is REAL, people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Schizophrenia is largely genetic:

    “Three areas on various chromosomes have been linked to schizophrenia in more than one study; however, the actual gene that increases risk for schizophrenia has not yet been found.”

    If your twin has it, you are likely to have it too. https://www.med.unc.edu/psych/cecmh/archived-old-pages/iii-what-are-psychotic-disorders/possible-causes-of-schizophrenia/

    This is not to deny that there are some factors outside of genes that can increase the risk, such as tragically being exposed to influenza while in your mother’s womb at a certain critical stage of brain development.

    Even a brief interruption of oxygen during the last moments of birth can cause subtle damage that emerges later. Premature birth also appears to be a risk factor. (https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/schizophrenia/causes/)

    Once the damage has been done or someone sadly loses the genetic lottery on this, the full effects tend to emerge as the brain matures over time.

    Once this basic factor is in place, then environmental stressors can bring about an episode or break. But the damage or genetic brain difference has to already exist:

    “Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness with a strong genetic component that is the subject of extensive research. Despite the high heritability, it is well recognized that non-genetic factors such as certain infections, cannabis use, psychosocial stress, childhood adversity, urban environment, and immigrant status also play a role. Whenever genetic and non-genetic factors co-exist, interaction between the two is likely. This means that certain exposures would only be of consequence given a specific genetic makeup”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8702084/

    As for cannabis use, I doubt also that it is a “cause;” but rather that people tend to experiment with it in their teen years when it’s most likely to have noticeably appeared anyway.

    Let’s look at what the article says here:

    “This idea that cat ownership could be linked to schizophrenia risk was proposed in a 1995 study, with exposure to a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii suggested as a cause. But the research so far has put forth mixed conclusions.”

    Toxoplasma is a known brain parasite. Moms to be shouldn’t be handling litterboxes, for sure. No doubt. But note that the balance of evidence – as the article notes itself – is mixed!

    What we have here is more stupid click bait “Science drama,” and not quality science reporting. It’s ridiculous how much junk science based on outlier findings is published for clicks nowadays.

    (Rant over; edited for spelling)

  11. So other pathogens may be responsible instead of the long-suspected toxoplasma gondii.

    In case you’re unfamiliar, the “strange effects” and “personality changes” links in the article get into some of the weirdness of T gondii. While cordyceps gets lots of attention from pop culture productions like The Last of Us, it doesn’t affect humans, while T gondii appears to in more limited but unsettling ways.

  12. Reads like Australians trying to find a reason to slaughter more cats to me.

  13. I’ve had cats all my life and look how I turned out.

    No, you shut up Stan.

  14. Huh….guess that explains why my schizophrenic ex-girlfriend really wanted a cat.

  22. That’s why I own both a cat and a dog, so they balance each other out. Lately I’ve been hearing them debating about the couch or something.

  24. Cats are stealthy right? So what if cats just primes the subconscious of catowners to feel that something is lurking near them all the time and at some point the subconscious manifest in the conscious realm as the brain tries to get a coherent world view?

    Like they feel something is there, so they start to hear imaginary voices to make the feeling tangible
    or they feel something is wathcing them, so they get paranoia

    Is that farfetched?

  27. I’m a cat owner myself and the minute I saw this article I had a theory. Schizophrenia is heavily linked to sleep disturbances. Not only that, but sleep deprivation can cause symptoms that MIMIC schizophrenia. I think cat owners get less sleep than dog owners due to cat activity periods (hello, 3am!) and a 2022 study agrees with me. That’s as far as my research took me but I think it’s plausible.

  28. But what if it was like the opposite that having schizo makes you more prone to be cat owner ???

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