Stress factor; In association with the NHS.

WOMEN subjected to severe stress during pregnancy risk jiving birth to children who develop schizophrenia, a study suggests.

Researchers found that children of Israeli women who were pregnant during the 1967 Six Day War had a significantly increased chance of being diagnosed with the psychotic disorder over the next 21 to 33 years.

Females appeared to be more affected than males. After the Arab-Israeli war, women who had been in their second month of foetal life during the conflict were 4.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia than those born at other times.

Men in the same situation had a 1.2 times increased risk of he mental illness. Study leader Dr Dolores Malaspina, from the New York University School of Medicine, said: "It's a very striking confirmation of something that has been suspected for quite some time.

'The placenta is very sensitive stress hormones in the another. These hormones were Drobably amplified during the time of war."

The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal BMC Psychiatry, studied the medical records of 38,829 people born in Jerusalem between 1964 and 1976.

Schizophrenia is most commonly emerges in people between 15 and 35.