What’s all this talk about cats and schizophrenia?
March 10, 2017
There’s been a lot of talk lately in the news that cats can affect your child’s mental health based on research that linked people who owned a cat as a child who are now suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or other forms of mental illness.
Toxoplasma Gondii and Mental Illness
The culprit is toxoplasma gondii found in feline feces that can be fatal in humans. Pregnant women are particularly at risk and advised not to handle the kitty litter box. While this still remains a threat, the link to mental illness has been disproved in this new study. So you can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Let’s look at this newer study to see how they reached this conclusion. Published in Psychological Medicine, the study looked at a much larger sample of test subjects – 4,676 children born between 1991 and 1992. Researchers were interested in whether these kids were born into a family with a cat or who had later, between the ages of 4-10, owned a cat. These households were also assessed for other factors that can affect mental illness - like growing up in poverty and in less than ideal conditions. At the ages of 13 and 18, the children were given a psychological test for signs of mental illness.
"The message for cat owners is clear: there is no evidence that cats pose a risk to children's mental health," Chief Researcher, Dr. Francesca Solmi of the Division of Psychiatry at University College London.
Where the original study lacked in data and breadth, the new study makes up for it. It followed these families for a longer period of time, testing a larger sample of subjects, and taking other factors into account like living arrangements.
Fortunately for cat lovers, this new evidence blows the myth out of the water that cats are bad for your mental health. In fact, the opposite is true. Cats have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety and have a positive effect on their owner’s emotional well-being. Just stay out of the litter box!