Growing Up With Cats Linked to Higher Schizophrenia Risk
Growing Up With Cats Linked to Higher Schizophrenia Risk
Scientists found that childhood cat ownership is associated with developing schizophrenia—a risk possibly fueled by a parasite.
My cat says this is false
You don't have a cat.
🤯
Your cat is talking to you and your conclusion is that you don’t have schizophrenia?
Also worth considering that growing up with cats linked to higher-income households, which is linked better access to Healthcare and accurate mental health diagnoses
Do you have a reference? The only reference I could find (which I’m not thrilled with) indicates that their survey says exactly the opposite. Dogs skew towards higher income households, cats skew lower.
Dogs have a higher cost of ownership in food and vet bills, but I suspect (owning both for many years) dogs have a much higher cost in time invested. If I was working two jobs to make ends meet, I could see doing it with a cat, but not a dog.
A dog clearly wrote this.
I feel like the title implies that cats cause schizophrenia when what's more likely is that people who have schizophrenia are more likely to like and own cats, and schizophrenia tends to run in families.
Or (EDIT: people with cats are) more likely to seek treatment.
Cats can carry toxoplasmosis which seems to have a correlation to schizophrenia. This could be the cause of crazy cat lady syndrome: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29068607/
Despite what a lot of people think, most pet cats don't have toxoplasmosis, and even those with toxoplasmosis rarely actually pass it on to humans, so that really shouldn't occur often enough to be measurable if it was transmission from cats causing it. You're more likely to get toxoplasmosis from uncooked meat, since that's how most humans are infected.
Now, people with toxoplasmosis are more likely to own cats, so there could be a correlation there, but at the same time, diagnosis for schizophrenia is more common in countries where there are less people infected with toxoplasmosis overall (I think in the US only like 11% of the population has been infected before). I can't say I feel like that would sufficiently explain the correlation.
It’s because they stare at the wall and ceiling at things that aren’t there and such, making you question your sanity.
It’s fine.
don't care don't care
i like catsK can folks like just post stuff so we don't need to "read the article" aha.
Toxoplasmosis
Isn't that limited to outdoor cats usually? If cats don't start out with toxo how do they actually "get" it?
The article talks about it in some detail. Cats are apparently part of the parasite’s multi-organism life cycle. It does start in rodents, wherein it manipulates their brains to make them less fearful of cats, making them more likely to come into contact with them. So, I guess indoor cats would be less likely to contract the parasite, but I’m not sure if that’s the only vector.
Ya like Ive never had a mouse and its def not on their account aha. Thats a pretty big contingency
Yeah this article is complete bullshit. We have known about Toxiiplasmasios for a long time and know that it’s from rodents that carry the parasite. If your cat is indoors then the chance of it catching a mouse with this parasite is super slim, and then for the human to catch it is even slimmer. Complete FUD.
That's kinda what I was thinking. If I'm totally candid, it seems like there was some unsaid kind of implication that rich people have larger houses maybe where theres more rodents to worry about or something...?
Like, they didn't seem to come out and say that directly but I feel like its sort of inescapable lol
You are more likely to get toxoplasmosis from eating undercooked meat than from your indoor cat unless you have a bad rodent problem in your house.
You can take my cat away......out of my cold, dead hands.
Warm, dead legs 🐈⬛
