Here is an example of what I thought was interesting information on schizophrenia.com:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/hypo.php

"Experts now agree that schizophrenia develops as a result of interplay between biological predisposition (for example, inheriting certain genes) and the kind of environment a person is exposed to. These lines of research are converging: brain development disruption is now known to be the result of genetic predisposition and environmental stressors early in development (during pregnancy or early childhood), leading to subtle alterations in the brain that make a person susceptible to developing schizophrenia. Environmental factors later in life (during early childhood and adolescence) can either damage the brain further and thereby increase the risk of schizophrenia, or lessen the expression of genetic or neurodevelopmental defects and decrease the risk of schizophrenia. In fact experts now say that schizophrenia (and all other mental illness) is caused by a combination of biological, psychological and social factors, and this understanding of mental illness is called the bio-psycho-social model.

"Neither the biological nor the environmental (psycho-social) categories is completely determinant, and there is no specified amount of input that will ensure someone will or will not develop schizophrenia. Moreover, risk factors may be different for different individuals - while one person may develop schizophrenia due largely to a strong family history of mental illness (e.g. a high level of genetic risk), someone else with much less genetic vulnerability may also develop the disease due to a more significant combination of prepregnancy factors, pregnancy stress, other prenatal factors, social stress, family stress or environmental factors that they experience during their childhood, teen or early adult years.

"Research has now shown that children's and teen's brains are very sensitive to stress (up to 5 to 10 times more sensitive than adult brains) and can be damaged by frequent or ongoing stress. What seems like mild to moderate stress for an adult, may be very severe stress for a child. This stress-related brain damage can greatly increase risk for many types of mental illness later in life."

On the other hand, this at

http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/...es/003511.html

"There are a couple of psychologists who think that child abuse is a significant cause, if not the major cause, of schizophrenia and began strongly publicizing this theory recently. However main-stream schizophrenia researchers say that there are no rigorous studies that support this theory.

"Increasingly however, leading psychiatric researchers have told us that they think it is likely that child abuse is one type of stress and trauma (of many) that is a contributing factor in schizophrenia (especially for people biologically or genetically predisposed) - though as yet there is no definitive long term studies that have proven this. (leading, mainstream researchers have told us of recent (fall, 2006) unpublished studies where the data supports the theory that child abuse can be a factor in risk for developing schizophrenia, but it is unlikely to be a factor in "most" or "many" cases of schizophrenia)."

A "couple of psychologists"? Well, at least they are addressing the possibility.