Critical Perspectives on Psychiatric Genetics (original) (raw)
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Legacy of mental Illness: A family with unusual genetic penetration
Mental illnesses are multifactorial disorders caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that the roles of genetic and environmental factors depend on each other. The aim of the report is to share the presentation of different psychiatric illnesses in generations of a family. A 31 year old male, unmarried, studied up to class eight, unemployed, muslim, non smoker, with average intelligence, hailing from the Dhaka with lower-middle economic background was diagnosed as a case of Schizophrenia. He has very strong family history of mental illness more prominent in male and persistent in generations. Males were affected by schizophrenia, personality disorder and substance related disorder, whereas only one female was affected by depression with suicide. In the patient's generation, two males were affected with schizophrenia, two male with personality disorder and two with substance related disorder without any presentation in female. In previous generation one male was affected with personality disorder (Father) and one female was suicide committer due to depression (Aunt). There was also presence of male psychotic patients in the grandmother's family of the patient. Family, twin and adoption studies have shown that, for schizophrenia, autism, manic depressive illness, major depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, panic disorder and other mental illnesses, the transmission of risk was heredity. Our case strongly made us curious to search for any common genetic link between different mental illnesses running in the family.
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 2010
The perceived and predicted implications of psychiatric genetic knowledge among persons with multiple cases of depression in the family Laegsgaard MM, Stamp AS, Hall EOC, Mors O. The perceived and predicted implications of psychiatric genetic knowledge among persons with multiple cases of depression in the family. Objective: Psychiatric genetic research raises hope regarding better treatment and prevention, but also regarding a possible de-stigmatizing effect of attributing mental illness to genetics. This study explores i) the impact on family relations of participating in a genetic study; ii) the impact of biogenetic attributions on perceptions of depression and stigma and iii) the perceived benefits and concerns regarding psychiatric genetic testing. Method: Focus groups were conducted with 17 participants suffering from depression, with multiple cases of depression in the family, and previously participating in a genetic study. Results: Participating in a genetic study caused more openness about depression in most families. A biogenetic explanation of depression was perceived as having the potential of diminishing self stigma. Testing of self and children was widely accepted, whereas prenatal testing raised concern. Conclusion: Persons suffering from depression may benefit from endorsing a biogenetic explanation, especially in relation to selfunderstanding and self-stigma.
Rediscovering the value of families for psychiatric genetics research
Molecular psychiatry, 2018
As it is likely that both common and rare genetic variation are important for complex disease risk, studies that examine the full range of the allelic frequency distribution should be utilized to dissect the genetic influences on mental illness. The rate limiting factor for inferring an association between a variant and a phenotype is inevitably the total number of copies of the minor allele captured in the studied sample. For rare variation, with minor allele frequencies of 0.5% or less, very large samples of unrelated individuals are necessary to unambiguously associate a locus with an illness. Unfortunately, such large samples are often cost prohibitive. However, by using alternative analytic strategies and studying related individuals, particularly those from large multiplex families, it is possible to reduce the required sample size while maintaining statistical power. We contend that using whole genome sequence (WGS) in extended pedigrees provides a cost-effective strategy for...
The crisis of psychiatry—insights and prospects from evolutionary theory
World Psychiatry 11(1):55-57, 2012, 2012
Darwin's emphasis on natural selection has had a transformative influence on how biological and medical sciences are conceptualized and conducted. However, the relevance of his ideas for the understanding of psychiatric conditions is still under-appreciated. Modern understanding of disease has required appreciation of the dialectical give and take between environmental influences, life history theory imperatives, human behavioral ecology, and characteristics of adaptive processes at all levels of the individual. This has enabled a better comprehension of metabolic disturbances, cancers, auto-immune disease, inherited anemias, and vulnerability to infectious disease (1). Here we propose that a contemporary and scientifically satisfying understanding of psychiatric conditions requires adopting a similar logic of inquiry, by taking into consideration the influence of environmental contingencies and natural selection in sculpting not just brain based mechanisms and processes germane to clinical neurosciences, but also diverse characteristics of behavior.
Resolving the paradox of common, harmful, heritable mental disorders: Which …
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2006
Given that natural selection is so powerful at optimizing complex adaptations, why does it seem unable to eliminate genes (susceptibility alleles) that predispose to common, harmful, heritable mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? We assess three leading explanations for this apparent paradox from evolutionary genetic theory: (1) ancestral neutrality (susceptibility alleles were not harmful among ancestors), (2) balancing selection (susceptibility alleles sometimes increased fitness), and (3) polygenic mutation-selection balance (mental disorders reflect the inevitable mutational load on the thousands of genes underlying human behavior). The first two explanations are commonly assumed in psychiatric genetics and Darwinian psychiatry, while mutation-selection has often been discounted. All three models can explain persistent genetic variance in some traits under some conditions, but the first two have serious problems in explaining human mental disorders. Ancestral neutrality fails to explain low mental disorder frequencies and requires implausibly small selection coefficients against mental disorders given the data on the reproductive costs and impairment of mental disorders. Balancing selection (including spatio-temporal variation in selection, heterozygote advantage, antagonistic pleiotropy, and frequency-dependent selection) tends to favor environmentally contingent adaptations (which would show no heritability) or high-frequency alleles (which psychiatric genetics would have already found). Only polygenic mutation-selection balance seems consistent with the data on mental disorder prevalence rates, fitness costs, the likely rarity of susceptibility alleles, and the increased risks of mental disorders with brain trauma, inbreeding, and paternal age. This evolutionary genetic framework for mental disorders has wide-ranging implications for psychology, psychiatry, behavior genetics, molecular genetics, and evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior.
Family patterns of psychopathology in psychiatric disorders
Comprehensive Psychiatry, 2015
Objective: Familial loading and crucial outcomes of family history of psychopathology in psychiatric disorders have long been recognized. There has been ample literature providing convincing evidence for the importance of family psychopathology in development of emotional disturbances in children as well as worse outcomes in the course of psychiatric disorders. More often, maternal psychopathology seems to have been an issue of interest rather than paternal psychopathology while effects of second-degree familiality have received almost no attention. In this study, we addressed the relations between affected first-and second-degree relatives of probands and categories of psychiatric disorders. Method: Subjects were 350 hospitalized psychiatric inpatients, consecutively admitted to psychiatry clinics in Van, Turkey. Mean age was 34.16 (SD ± 12) and 51.4% of the sample consisted of male patients. Assessment of psychopathology in psychiatric probands was conducted based on DSM-IV TR. Familial loading of psychiatric disorders amongst first-and second-degree relatives of patients were initially noted primarily relying on patients' retrospective reports, and confirmed by both phone call and following official health records via the Medical Knowledge System. We analyzed the data using latent class analysis approach. Results: We found four patterns of familial psychopathology. Latent homogeneous subsets of patients due to familial characteristics were as paternal kinship psychopathology with schizophrenia, paternal kinship psychopathology with mood disorders, maternal kinship psychopathology and core family psychopathology. Conclusion: Family patterns were critical to exerting variation in psychiatric disorders of probands and affected relatives. Probands with a core family pattern of psychopathology exhibited the most colorful clinical presentations in terms of variation in psychopathology. We observed a specificity of intergenerational transmission of psychiatric disorders when family patterns of psychopathology were taken into consideration, even second-degree relatives of psychiatric probands.