Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychiatry The Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond Virginia USA
2. Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto Toronto Canada
3. Department of History Humboldt University Berlin Germany
Abstract
AbstractIrma Weinberg, a German‐Jewish Neuropsychiatrist/Physician, authored the fourth report from the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich examining the risk for dementia praecox (DP) in particular relatives of DP probands, here first‐cousins. She examined 977 cousins of 54 DP probands and found a best‐estimate risk of 1.4%. She conducted within‐study analyses, showing a much higher risk for DP in the siblings than cousins of DP probands. She studied DP‐related personalities showing a familial link between these conditions and risk for DP. She demonstrated that the risk for DP in cousins was impacted substantially by the distribution, in ancestors, of psychosis and personality abnormalities. After completing work on this article, Weinberg worked in private practice in Frankfurt, emigrating to the Netherlands in 1934, where she worked at a Jewish psychiatric hospital. In 1943, German occupiers evacuated the hospital, transporting the patients and staff, either directly to Auschwitz or, like Weinberg, to the Westerbork transit camp. On September 4, 1944, Dr. Weinberg was transported to Theresienstadt and soon thereafter to Auschwitz, where she was murdered at the age of 53. Her history raises painful questions about the relationship between genetic studies of psychiatric illness in prewar Germany and the Holocaust.
Subject
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience,Psychiatry and Mental health,Genetics (clinical)
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