Study leader Dr. Dolores Malaspina, from the New York University School of Medicine, and colleagues looked at birth data for 88,829 people born in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976 and cross-referenced the information with Israel's national psychiatry registry.
The analysis revealed that 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.
The study also showed that the pattern was gender-specific, affecting women more than men.
Following the 1967 war, females who had been in their second month of fetal life during the conflict were 4.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia than females born at other times. Males in the same situation had a 1.2 times increased risk of the mental illness, the study said.
Researchers say that the placenta is very sensitive to stress hormones in the mother and during war these hormones were at their peak.
The study is published in the journal BMC Psychiatry.
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disorder that affects about 1.1 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older. It is marked by delusional thinking, hallucinations, and the risk of suicide.
