Sorry for inundating you with so many health stories, but a bunch came out on Monday and I am just getting to them.

We have discussed at length about how autism could possibly be caused by vaccinations -- unlikely, according to the medical experts -- but now researchers are saying parents with mental illnesses like schizophrenia are more likely to have children with autism, according to Reuters.

The study of families in Sweden with children born between 1977 and 2003 involved 1,227 children diagnosed with autism. They were compared with families of nearly 31,000 children who did not have autism. Sweden's detailed health registry provides a wealth of data for such studies.

Autism, which is marked by impaired social interaction and communication, or a related disorder like Asperger's syndrome, affects an estimated one out of every 150 U.S. children, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Asperger's is marked by mild social awkwardness...

Which genes lie behind various mental illnesses are also poorly understood, according to the researchers, whose study appeared in the journal Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Earlier studies have shown a higher rate of psychiatric disorders in families of autistic children than in the general population," Daniels said.

The association between a child's autism and mental illness in the parent was strongest with schizophrenia, and was less powerful when the mother suffered from depression or personality disorders. There was little association between autism and parental addiction to alcohol or drugs or some other types of mental illness.

It doesn't sound like we are much closer to understanding what causes autism as it continues to allude scientists.

The New York University Child Study Center has begun the rollout across New York of a new advertising campaign on childhood psychiatric and developmental disorders, first in New York, and likely then across the rest of the country. Here's what they've come up with:

I can't begin to describe how wrong this seems. The dehumanising idea that individuals with mental illness and other disorders are trapped within their issues, unable to communicate, locked up and held hostage by a disorder is one I think most of us thought had been left behind decades ago.

My sister has been married a little over a year.  She and her husband aren't quite ready to have kids yet, but they talk about it like every young couple does.  There is one tough thing they have to face - my brother-in-law has (treated) bipolar disorder.

Don't flame me but I was listening to Bill O a few minutes ago.  He was talking about the shooting at Virginia Tech, and framed the question as one of "mental illness" or evil.