New research from Finland has highlighted an unexpected effect of an unplanned pregnancy in which the child is not wanted—a higher than average risk of developing schizophrenia.

Children who are unwanted are two and a half times more likely to develop schizophrenia than those who are either wanted or wanted but “mistimed,” according to researchers from the University of Oulu (British Journal of Psychiatry 1996;169:637-40).

They collected data prospectively in 1996 on 11 017 people from northern Finland— 96% of all births in the …