The division of the Roman Empire into two parts was particularly damaging for the Western Empire because it relied on the Eastern Empire for economic support.
About a quarter of those suffer from severe illnesses, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and the rest from less debilitating ones, such as mild depression or anxiety.
The findings help shed light on why those who are born and raised in urban areas are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and schizophrenia than those brought up in the countryside.
And then there is the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, Ph. D., who has schizophrenia and a son who suffers from the illness as well (Psychiatric News, July 6, 2007).
All of this evidence, which is easily accessible on the Internet, points to the possibility that Loughner may be suffering from a mental illness like schizophrenia.
But Mr. Yang's doctors see a bigger failing. Despite clear signs of schizophrenia Mr. Yang had received medical care for just one month in the previous five years.
The media and public often seem to want to find a culprit in psychosis, and armchair speculation about whether schizophrenia might somehow be responsible inevitably follows.
Schizophrenia is thought to be at least partly inherited, so the siblings of people who have the condition have a slightly increased risk of also developing the disorder.
Maternal and intrauterine infections are notably common, so one question is that if schizophrenia is infectious in origin, why aren't more offspring born with schizophrenia?
It also found significant evidence of association with variation on chromosomes 11 and 18 that could help account for the thinking and memory deficits of schizophrenia.
In the nearer term, this development could greatly assist the study of diseases, like schizophrenia and Huntington's, that result from vesicle-cell interaction failure.
Joseph Coyle, with Harvard Medical School, who has studied schizophrenia and other neurological disorders for more than 40 years, was drawn into his career path early on.
The study conducted by the International Schizophrenia Consortium also compared the SNP patterns in schizophrenia patients and the genomes of people with other diseases.
While complete eradication is highly unlikely, Brown says, the finding has implications for prevention and treatment (see Can Infection-Related Schizophrenia Be Prevented?).
The results could have implications for understanding the functional significance of a prominent brain abnormality observed in neuropsychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia.