I would suspect that one of the biggest problems is that until recently alot of the medical establishment, including psychiatrists used to talk about the "gene" that controled schizophrenia or the "gene" that controlled bi-polar disorder. Nowadays I heard that just in talking about autism we are no longer talking about one gene but in the interplay of perhaps hundreds of genes, and the same might be true of ADHD and Bi-polar as well.

So could it mean there is really no magic gene? If there are hunderts of genes it may as well be... that the "genetic" compenent is untracable, as there would be too big variety.

I have somehow problem with the genetic aspect... because... where would it lead? To gene manipulation? Would we do away with the bad bundles of genes (humans)?


Complicating this is that not all the same medication works with all patients with Bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, which suggests that while the symptoms they suffer from are similar (I would argue about this also) it would seem that the source of the symtoms come from different causes. In short, you have a name not of a disease, but of a list of symptoms, which is common when dealling with mental illness.

Well, the symptoms are different... the way one handles them is different too... tolerance of discomfort is different... as much as we like to pretend personal weakness does not exist... some people are tougher than others. Some can handle their emotions in healthier ways.

YOu cannot measure emotional discomfort. SOmebody falls apparent after a single small bump in the road... other people can live through attrocious things and rock on fairly well. Is it fair to say that the person who went through objectivelly worse thing and is holding up well suffered less than somebody who falls appart easily?

Added to this is th growing evidence that it is a blend of environment and genetic factors that lead to the emergence of these problems in most people who have them, and the old standard deterministic medical model is severely challenged, in some ways by a new form of itself. Some of the older doctors have a hard time with it.

I hope the "medical only" model is ditched. Other aspects need and should be considered.

Including spiritual and existential ones.