I just don’t get why we blanket everything under genetics.. Can that actually be proven? For instance with depression, I often hear yeah it’s genetics, nothing to be done but medication. But if a parent raises a child while battling depression, how on earth would they be able to show up fully to be able to raise a healthy, emotionally supported child? If we know adverse childhood experiences and emotional neglect changes the brain, then how is it supposed to make the right amount of chemicals? So when it’s said depression is genetics, how did they actually prove that for instance?
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We don’t “blanket everything under genetics.” I’m really not sure what you even mean by that. Some diseases or disorders are clearly and disputably genetic, some are very much obviously not genetic, and some have complex multifactor causes of which genetics are simply one of many factors, no single factor of which is guaranteed to trigger the disease. There’s a whole spectrum of more and less obvious genetic links to disease and more or less obviously ways to prove the link.
On one end of the spectrum, we have a disease like cystic fibrosis. It is clearly and indisputably a genetic disorder. It is caused by a specific mutation in a single gene. Every single person with cystic fibrosis has 2 copies of this gene mutation, and no people without cystic mutation have 2 copies. Every person with cystic fibrosis has a parent who carries 1 copy of the defective gene. There’s no possible other explanation except for the fact that it’s an autosomal recessive inherited genetic disorder.
On the other end of the spectrum is a disease like type 1 diabetes. There are a number of genetic mutations that are common in people with type 1 diabetes, and we know that those genes are linked to your immune system (type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease) and many people who have it have a parent or grandparent who also have it, but having any one or even several of those mutations doesn’t guarantee that you will develop it. Those mutations are simply risk factors.
Depression and other psychological disorders fall into the latter category. There are undeniable genetic links, such as mutations that affect chemical signalling molecules in the brain, or neuron functions in parts of the brain that we know are associated with specific psychological disorders, and the fact that these disorders tend to occur in higher frequencies in families where parents and grandparents also have similar disorders,but they’re just risk factors. They might predispose you to depression or schizophrenia or whatever else, but you might have a ton or risk factors and never develop any of these disorders because there are so many other non-genetic factors at play. Literally no one is saying that psychological disorders are exclusively genetic.
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