Israeli High Risk Study: editor's introduction.

The National Institute of Mental Health joint study by the United States and Israel, known as the Israeli High-Risk Study,is a unique long-term followup investigation of children at genetic risk for schizophrenia. We compared the development of psychiatric disorder in two groups of such children, one group raised in kibbutz environments, the other by their own parents. Matched controls were studied as well. The subjects were evaluated at ages 11, 17, and 26; an extensive battery of cognitive and clinical tests, as well as psychophysiological and diagnostic procedures, was used. This issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin reports and summarizes evaluations conducted when the subjects were in their early thirties, as well as some previously unreported data obtained when the subjects were 17 years old.