<story><title>No person who was born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/939qbz/people-born-blind-are-mysteriously-protected-from-schizophrenia</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Retric</author><text>If you’re wondering about how common this should be:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;if schizophrenia occurs at a rate of 0.72% in the population (McGrath et al., 2008) and congenital blindness occurs at an estimated rate of 0.03% in people born in the 1970s and 1980s (based on Robinson et al., 1987), then the joint probability of a person having both conditions, if the two are independent, would be 0.02% or 2 out of every 10,000. Although this is a low prevalence rate, it is higher than the rates for childhood-onset schizophrenia (Remschmidt and Theisen, 2005), and many other well-known medical conditions (e.g., Hodgkin&amp;#x27;s lymphoma, Prader Willi syndrome, Rett&amp;#x27;s Syndome). Based on this estimated prevalence rate, in the United States alone (with a population of 311, 591, 917, as of July 2011, according the US census), there should be approximately 620 congenitally blind people with schizophrenia.&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC3615184&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC3615184&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That does do rule out misdiagnosis etc, but it does seem to support a correlation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prostheticvamp</author><text>Just so we are clear: the approach taken in the studies described is “we looked at a bunch of blind people and couldn’t find a schizophrenic”, and “we looked at a bunch of schizophrenics and couldn’t find a blind person.”&lt;p&gt;The appropriate question is: can such an approach, in a wildly fractured series of data sets, overlook 600 people?</text></comment>
<story><title>No person who was born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/939qbz/people-born-blind-are-mysteriously-protected-from-schizophrenia</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Retric</author><text>If you’re wondering about how common this should be:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;if schizophrenia occurs at a rate of 0.72% in the population (McGrath et al., 2008) and congenital blindness occurs at an estimated rate of 0.03% in people born in the 1970s and 1980s (based on Robinson et al., 1987), then the joint probability of a person having both conditions, if the two are independent, would be 0.02% or 2 out of every 10,000. Although this is a low prevalence rate, it is higher than the rates for childhood-onset schizophrenia (Remschmidt and Theisen, 2005), and many other well-known medical conditions (e.g., Hodgkin&amp;#x27;s lymphoma, Prader Willi syndrome, Rett&amp;#x27;s Syndome). Based on this estimated prevalence rate, in the United States alone (with a population of 311, 591, 917, as of July 2011, according the US census), there should be approximately 620 congenitally blind people with schizophrenia.&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC3615184&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC3615184&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That does do rule out misdiagnosis etc, but it does seem to support a correlation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ocfnash</author><text>Just a moment, 0.72% x 0.03% = 0.0002%, which is about 2 out every 1,000,000.</text></comment>