A new study provides compelling evidence that congenital blindness and early cortical blindness may decrease the risk of developing schizophrenia

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The unusual discovery has fascinated scientists and may lead to a better understanding of what causes schizophrenia – a question that has baffled scientists for decades.

The UWA researchers used data collected from health registers between 1980 and 2001 on nearly half a million people in Western Australia and found no one with a diagnosis of congenital or early cortical blindness developed schizophrenia.

Lead author Professor Vera Morgan from the UWA Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit in the Schools of Population and Global Health and Medicine said they also found no one with congenital or early cortical blindness had developed any other psychotic illnesses.

Professor Morgan said that the brain’s plasticity could be the link.

“It’s very difficult to say what the exact mechanism is but we think that the protective effect for schizophrenia is related to some kind of compensatory cortical reorganisation in the brain that’s happening in response to having congenital or early cortical blindness,” she said.

Would you rather be blind or have schizophrenia

  • Blind
  • Schizophrenia
0 voters
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This makes sense, you can’t have visual hallucinations if you’re blind. But I think I’d rather be blind sense at least I know what reality is. As with schizophrenia you don’t

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Being blind is horrible, but my uncle had schizophrenia and could not do anything almost his whole life. It’s also horrible.

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This might seem weird however when I got my eyes tested for my prescription glasses. The different lenses they tried made me feel, with my symptoms less or better. It was unusual but a few of the lenses I looked through made me feel so ill, then some made me feel better. Since then I thought it may have something to do with they eyes??

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