Study: Owning a cat could make you mentally ill

MANILA, Philippines - Does owning a cat  increase your chance of having mental illness in the long run?

According to the study published in the journal Schizophrenia Research, most of the cats carry the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, a common parasite which can trigger development of Schizophrenia in humans.

Researchers from the Stanley Medical Research Institute and Dr. Robert H. Yolken of Stanley Laboratory of Developmental Neurovirology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine analyzed more than 2,000 surveys from National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) taken in 1982 and found that about half of families with children that developed serious mental illness owned cats in their homes.

The results were the same with two studies conducted among NAMI members in the 1990s.

“Cat ownership in childhood has now been reported in three studies to be significantly more common in families in which the child is later diagnosed with schizophrenia or another serious mental illness,” the authors of the study said in a statement to Time Magazine.

According to the study, the parasite can get into the human brain and develop into cysts. But it also said the disease do not develop right away. People with strong immune system can keep the virus at bay. The disease only gets activated once the immune system weakens most likely during late adolescence.

Toxoplasma gondii is also responsible for an illness called toxoplasmosis, which can cause flu-like symptoms and miscarriage for pregnant women. For infants born to infected mothers and for people with weakened immune systems, toxoplasmosis can cause extremely serious complications.

However, the researchers emphasized that you cannot get the parasite by petting your cat alone, but from handling feces and ingesting it. Therefore, suggesting to keep the litter boxes covered.