[pachyderm]

"Misunderstanding the role of genes fosters myths about mental illness."

(Long article):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/artic...-made-me-do-it

[Rhiannonsmoon]

Hello Pachy,

thanks for posting this article. Not sure of its aim; not everything is inherited and there is learned behaviour, but learned behaviour and hereditary physical dysfunction is not (in my opinion only), the same or a similar thing.

I do agree that news reporting is sensationalist and they throw out a headline to make people read the story to get hits on as many pages as possible; they like to rile people up get them feeling stress and anger and I can't think of any good reason why they do it.

[Perna]

Genes and inherited aptitudes, nature/nuture and how you're raised, etc. can't "make" you do anything; they just give you information with a certain slant to it. But there's always other information around if you look for it. That's where behaviorist theories fall short for me, there's so much going on, so much interaction that there's no way one could know all the elements as to why someone did something. Too individual. Besides, I may be crazy but I'm not stupid!

[Ygrec23]

I think Perna is right. No one (including Professor Jerome Kagan of Harvard, the arch-fiend) believes that more than fifty percent of mental and emotional traits are inherited. But that leaves us with the incredibly complex, difficult, mind-boggling task of figuring out how nature and nurture continually interact to produce "us". If you really want to know the answer, come back in three or four hundred years. As for us here now, we're just at the beginning of the beginning. There's just no reason whatsoever to get all riled up about nature or nurture anymore. We ALL know now that BOTH have very important roles to play in the lives of every individual. But it will be CENTURIES before we truly understand the interplay of these forces. I know that that's very unsatisfactory to a lot of people who want answers NOW. But, unfortunately, we live at the beginning of the scientific age, not at the middle or the end. And journalists (including Psychology Today) really don't care whether or not what they say is true, so long as you look at or buy the next issue of their publication. The article to which Pach pointed at the beginning of this thread is not a bad article at all. But SO MANY of them ARE! The bottom-line: for the time being and for any of our individual futures, we have to work out, by ourselves (with some slight help from our T's and P-docs) the best answers, work-arounds, solutions, ameliorations of our own problems. "Science" today holds no magic answers to the mental illnesses with which we struggle.

[lonegael]

Thank you, Pachy! I try to tell my kids and their parents that just because the kid has shown to have a disorder or has a genetic predisposition behind the problems they have, does not mean there isn't anything that can be done about it through hard work and a healthy dose of creativity. All too often, they parents act like you have given the child a life sentence, and most of the time, it's far from the truth.

As to me, I know there are both genetic and environmental roots to my problems, and I still have to do something about them. No getting off the hook here! My choices might be limited by certain factors, but I still have the ability to choose, and choose I shall!