Year: 1991 Source: American Journal of Psychiatry, v.148, no.6, (June 1991), p.775-779 SIEC No: 19910921

Compared the proportion of blood relatives who had had psychiatric hospitalizations, had committed suicide, or had self-reported mental illness to the proportion of spouses with the same manifestations. The proportion of blood relatives significantly exceeded that of spouses. Since heterozygous carriers of the Wolfram syndrome gene are 50-fold more common among the blood relatives than spouses, this is evidence that heterozygous carriers are predisposed to significant psychiatric illness.