Do genes determine mental health?

[goldisheavy]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/12/why-genes-are-leftwing

 

I found this article very interesting. Of course it confirms everything I believed already, so perhaps that's why I think it's interesting.

[Jetsun]

Good article, I will share this with some non believers I know, thanks. Perhaps they will start looking beyond drugs a bit more for some solutions to help people now.

[Apech]

I like this:

 

Instead, the Human Genome Project is rapidly providing a scientific basis for the political left. Childhood maltreatment, economic inequality and excessive materialism seem the main determinants of mental illness. State-sponsored interventions, like reduced inequality, are the most likely solutions.

 

Just to be controversial - I would also suggest that ADHD is a kind of scam which labels the impact and effect of poor parenting (by which I mean the selfish withdrawal of affection) as a disease. I'm not saying kids don't suffer but I am saying because they are not valued or loved they are lost within themselves and cannot settle their minds. They look outside all the time for something that will satisfy them and of course cannot find it ....

[gendao]

I would also suggest that ADHD is a kind of scam which labels the impact and effect of poor parenting (by which I mean the selfish withdrawal of affection) as a disease.

Actually, the genetic research shows that this is simply a phony "disease" cooked up by Big Pharma to sell drugs to "cure" it.

 

It's a clever Bernaysian psy-op known as "disease branding."

If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.

For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.

 

Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room, Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to him as his own idea."

 

Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease branding."

 

To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more palatable to potential patients. Panic disorder, reflux disease, erectile dysfunction, restless legs syndrome, bipolar disorder, overactive bladder, ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, even clinical depression: All these conditions were once regarded as rare until a marketing campaign transformed the brand.

 

Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will come to him as his own idea.

Overall, the whole original article was just another example of very poor liberal science/confirmation bias. Multiple studies have now consistently shown time and again that our development is a combination of biology & environment, not wholly one or the other. The whole liberal idea that everything is merely "social construct" has in fact been thoroughly debunked by ongoing genome research. Clearly, many medical conditions do have a strong genetic basis.

 

Even homosexuality appears to have some biological factors involved. Liberals don't seem to reject that notion, though...

[Encephalon]

Astonishingly enough, I have to side with Vortex here, even though the Karl Marx shrine I've constructed in the middle of my living room has begun to emit ominous warning signs.

 

The political hijacking of the ongoing debate about nature versus nurture has usually made fools out of partisans (journalists?) on all sides who aren't qualified to interpret the scientific conclusions. I think it's been demonstrated that environmental conditioning such as chronic poverty and crime can turn human beings into basketcases, but genetic factors are just as important to the whole picture.

 

By the same token, disguising eugenics and the alledged disparity in IQ amongst different racial groups as "Bell Curve" arguments (Herrnstein and Murray) in order to suggest that no amount of social spending on the underclass will matter since they're genetically unfit to begin with was obscene when said book was published and has been universally reputed since.

 

Nature and nurture, left and right, yin and yang... these are all part of the great dialectic of the Tao. To demonize one over the other is to miss this ebb and flow entirely.

 

Vortex, are you dissolving your cranium gates? Your writing sounds different. What are you eating? Are you getting laid?

Edited October 15, 2010 by Blasto

[goldisheavy]

I would also suggest that ADHD is a kind of scam which labels the impact and effect of poor parenting (by which I mean the selfish withdrawal of affection) as a disease.

 

A thousand times "yes" to this. We have more than a few bogus psychological conditions and we also have the cure for them: adderall. Nice. The big pharma boys have got it all figured out.

[goldisheavy]

Multiple studies have now consistently shown time and again that our development is a combination of biology & environment, not wholly one or the other. The whole liberal idea that everything is merely "social construct" has in fact been thoroughly debunked by ongoing genome research.

 

You just contradicted a well researched article that cites more than one recent scientific study. Ignorance is bliss. Say hi to Glenn Beck for me.

Edited October 15, 2010 by goldisheavy

[Apech]

You just contradicted a well researched article that cites more than one recent scientific study. Ignorance is bliss.

 

Yes I could see no bias in the original article - it was simply saying that the genticists had been unable to find a link to mental health. The conclusion is obvious - that the causes for mental health problems are personal, environmental and social. I think this is a good conclusion because it means that the causes can be addressed by mankind generally and more importantly by an individual. You should by conscious effort be able to improve mental health without having to think that you are somehow cursed by nature to suffer (from whatever it is).

Edited October 15, 2010 by apepch7

[gendao]

^^ Uh, to recap - genome research showed that ADHD is not a genetic condition. Not surprising for a Big Pharma-branded "disease."

 

But proving that bogus Big Pharma "diseases" are not genetic does NOT prove...that genes have no influence on behavior, lol. Yet another example of why all these idiot journalists with nothing but English degrees should stop trying to "educate" the rest of us about stuff they always failed out of in school (like science).

 

Seriously, I don't try to lecture them on Shakespeare - so maybe they should stop lecturing us on anything that involves numbers, logic & a 3-digit IQ???

Vortex, are you dissolving your cranium gates? Your writing sounds different. What are you eating? Are you getting laid?

Lol, well I feel my logic has remained consistent...however you may be perceptive enough to have noticed an underlying shift in my psyche.

 

I felt like I recently made a turning point after this past Sunday. In short, I had constructed a protective suit of negativity early on in life. And over time, I had even come to adopt this post-postnatal shell as my new self. Entirely forgetting my old self as naive and outdated. But lately, I've reached the point where this black armor is no longer protective...but strangling and weighing me down. So, I've made a concerted effort to release this sarcophagus of negativity and reawaken my more original self buried inside.

Edited October 15, 2010 by vortex

[goldisheavy]

Yes I could see no bias in the original article - it was simply saying that the genticists had been unable to find a link to mental health. The conclusion is obvious - that the causes for mental health problems are personal, environmental and social. I think this is a good conclusion because it means that the causes can be addressed by mankind generally and more importantly by an individual. You should by conscious effort be able to improve mental health without having to think that you are somehow cursed by nature to suffer (from whatever it is).

 

I agree. Pharmacology can still be a useful crutch, but at least we now know it's only a crutch and not a permanent solution. It's like when you break your arm and you have to wear a cast, you don't wear the cast forever. You have to take it off at some point. I think people should be counseled in such a way that they either don't need any drugs, or if they use them, there is a plan to get off them in a set period of time.

[Dreamingawake]

I felt like I recently made a turning point after this past Sunday. In short, I had constructed a protective suit of negativity early on in life. And over time, I had even come to adopt this post-postnatal shell as my new self. Entirely forgetting my old self as naive and outdated. But lately, I've reached the point where this black armor is no longer protective...but strangling and weighing me down. So, I've made a concerted effort to release this sarcophagus of negativity and reawaken my more original self buried inside.

 

 

Went through something similar several years ago. Feels good doesn't it? Like stepping out of a stuffy room and into the fresh air outside

[Encephalon]

Glad to hear things are evolving. Many of us in here seem to be moving in positive directions.

 

Not to detract from the comraderie, but one small point; we Libs don't assign the term "social construct" to natural phenomena such as physics or life processes. The term is self-explanatory; a man-made construction such as a church, a monarchy, or an economic theory that over time becomes imbued with some independent moral leverage.

 

But, if there is some bonehead out there saying otherwise, send me the link.

[Birch]

Here's a likely candidate:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Beast-Radical-Re-Vision-Capitalism/dp/1591027543

 

Some interesting stuff in there to say the least. Very compelling, chunked reading. Neatly packaged offhand tone with small apology for all kinds of atrocities committed in the name of "transcendence."

 

A few concessions to empathy and compassion, which I felt quite hopeful about but so far overall it's a story where a human argues "divine right" to do whatever he damn well wants (even up to and including suggesting that "Nature" rewards him for doing so, which I very much doubt, given our current predicament). I haven't got to the end of it yet (despite it being compelling).

[Encephalon]

Hmmmm...

I read "Global Brain" and found it indespensible for constructing an intellectual support for interdependency, Indra's web, panentheism... and all the rest of my green Taoism/Buddhism. I don't have the strength to read more Bloom any time soon, but I have to wonder how he's defining his terms, because "GB" was pretty cut and dry; we're either going to think globally and find our well-being in the health of the world ecosystem, or it's game over.

[Birch]

I'll send you this once I'm done with it. Which will be shortly. Or you can go look up a few pages on Amazon to get the gist.

[Sunya]

There is evidence that shows twins when raised separately grow up with very similar mannerisms and even mental health issues. There examples of the complete opposite also, I'm sure. The article is very biased. It's not nature OR nurture, it's both really and the most popular psychological approach today is called biopsychosocial. It's not just biology nor is it just society.

 

Just because we haven't found a gene for a specific disorder doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I'm not talking about ADHD or anything, but chemical imbalances that cause specific disorders like depression, bipolar, schizophrenia ,etc. There is evidence that these disorders are linked to chemical imbalances and there is evidence that people are predisposed to such imbalances.

Edited October 16, 2010 by Sunya

[goldisheavy]

Just because we haven't found a gene for a specific disorder doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

 

It's worse than that. Not only have individual genes not been found to correlate with any mental conditions so far, but even complicated gene pattern candidates have all been ruled out as well.

 

Certainly there remain some geneticists who will still want to try to link genes to mental conditions, but I think the article is correct in that most of them have changed their minds and have basically given up the idea, and moved onto bigger and brighter things that will be a lot more likely to get you published than looking for this needle in a hay stack if it even exists.

Edited October 16, 2010 by goldisheavy

[Apech]

^^ Uh, to recap - genome research showed that ADHD is not a genetic condition. Not surprising for a Big Pharma-branded "disease."

 

But proving that bogus Big Pharma "diseases" are not genetic does NOT prove...that genes have no influence on behavior, lol. Yet another example of why all these idiot journalists with nothing but English degrees should stop trying to "educate" the rest of us about stuff they always failed out of in school (like science).

 

Seriously, I don't try to lecture them on Shakespeare - so maybe they should stop lecturing us on anything that involves numbers, logic & a 3-digit IQ???

 

 

 

The article is specifically about mental disease and genes. They have been unable to find a link. It does not say that genes have no affect on behaviour or health - diseases that are genetic are well known. The author is academic psychologist (I know this doesn't say a lot) but he is not a journalist with an English degree.

 

In this video he appears (in the second half) to argue against a woman who is pushing the genetic link based on a study. The sub text to this is that the government (British) is trying to reduce funding in certain fields including education and disability ... I would guess that the results of the study have been rushed out to create an argument to sustain funding.

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=BcasoXXeNPY

[Birch]

"when raised separately"

 

When raised separately where?

 

I wonder how many sets of twins you get to experiment on ?

 

I'm only half kidding. I'll need to go and read those twins experiments to see what they controlled for exactly.

 

"What if" both of the twins were raised in the same culture?

 

I don't see where the problem with digging around into the "causes" of mental illness is if it allows people to be helped in ways that are not harmful to them (I'd love to add "and others/future others" but fear it might be taken as a sign that I am an "idealist" - again...)

 

I can see that the findings of this study might not please some people (especially the findings that might put into question socio-cultural ways of raising kids for example) which might be why they'd be willing to dismiss the research. Too close to home? But this is just me speculating too far beyond what the findings say so discard it as my biased opinion.

 

Please, no drive-by taking offense to this post and mentioning your own kids and parenting-skills, unless they were part of the research, in which case that would be awesome.

[Non]

What about EPIGENETICS?

 

If scientists have not been able to find a link to genes, maybe they'll find something related to the epigemone.

 

Actually, this has already been proven.

 

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html

Edited October 16, 2010 by Non

[Mark Foote]

What about EPIGENETICS?

 

If scientists have not been able to find a link to genes, maybe they'll find something related to the epigemone.

 

Actually, this has already been proven.

 

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html

 

Would'a liked to have read that article, looks like the page is discontinued.

 

I'm remembering something I read that said that certain genes don't kick in until in the presence of certain environmental factors. Here's an article, dated 2003:

 

Can dormant genes be activated by environmental factors?

 

Here's one from September 2010:

 

Cells Get Stressed, Too

 

from the latter: "Environmental factors such as pollution, bacterial toxins and tobacco smoke can turn on genes in cells that are supposed to be off, said researchers from the Biotech Research and Innovation Centre at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark."

 

I live in a house with a six-year old, whose teacher demanded the child receive treatment for ADHD. My six-year-old friend is reported to have better concentration in school now, and I think she is more focused here at home; maybe too much so, who can say.

 

College kids are taking ritalin to pass exams, so I read. I drink a lot of coffee, which would on the surface seem to be a more organic alternative; lots of nice things said about coffee with respect to diabetes and colon cancer, I guess.

 

I lived with a guy who was diagnosed as bipolar, or schizophrenic. He went nuts in his 19th year, which is pretty common among those who become schizophrenic (flipping out in their late teens, that is). This commonality alone makes me think there is some genetic or genetic/environmental basis to the disease.

 

I'm not sure that avoiding drugs is going to be all that healthy either. As I've mentioned before on TTB, Dr. Michael Shames in Marin, California was part of a team that studied the population of a small town east of San Francisco that was exposed to a "non-toxic" chemical plume from a Chevron plant. Most of the runny noses and respiratory complaints were resolved within weeks of the release, but his team discovered that the immune systems of the people exposed remained kicked into high gear a year or so after the release.

 

Dr. Shames concluded this was why many of his patients who were border-line low thyroid seemed to benefit from a prescription for thyroid hormone. Hashimoto syndrome is a depression of the activity of the thyroid gland because of hyper-immune system activity.

 

The endocrine balance may be affected in other ways. Dr. John Lee, also of Marin, found that his patients benefited from doses of the hormone progesterone that were at levels within the range of normal human production; his patients saw an overall health benefit, not just with regard to women's post-menopausal difficulties. Another doctor whose name I can't recall saw the same thing using physiological (as opposed to pharmacological) doses of hydro-cortisol. Both Lee and the doctor prescribing hydro-cortisol were careful to use something molecularly identical to the human hormone, in low doses; progesterone is even available in skin creams without a prescription, it's absorbed transdermally.

 

Lee and the doctor prescribing hydro-cortisol testified to the general improvement in health of their patients, yet both could only conjecture at why. I think Shames has the answer, and because our environment is so thoroughly saturated with pesticides and other "non-toxics" (more pesticides are used in the suburbs than on the farms, so I've read), there's no way out of a space-ship Earth mentality at this point. We're all an experiment, better hope we can figure out ways to stay alive until we get turned around toward Eden again.

[Non]

Epigenetics, DNA: How You Can Change Your Genes' Destiny

Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html

[Creation]

When scientists discovered the genetic code, there was this idea that "If we could only understand this DNA molecule, we would completely understand heredity, and everything not explainable by DNA would be non-hereditary." I think this is a mistake. There is a lot more going on here. Epigenetics is as start on understanding this. In another vein, with identical twins separated a birth, there is the whole issue of their shared womb experience.

 

Another issue is the unfortunate statement in the article that "Instead, the Human Genome Project is rapidly providing a scientific basis for the political left. Childhood maltreatment, economic inequality and excessive materialism seem the main determinants of mental illness. State-sponsored interventions, like reduced inequality, are the most likely solutions."

 

The fallacy here is the inference "if environment is the major cause of mental illness, the agenda of the political left is the solution". To me that is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

Edited October 17, 2010 by Creation

[Apech]

 

 

Another issue is the unfortunate statement in the article that "Instead, the Human Genome Project is rapidly providing a scientific basis for the political left. Childhood maltreatment, economic inequality and excessive materialism seem the main determinants of mental illness. State-sponsored interventions, like reduced inequality, are the most likely solutions."

 

The fallacy here is the inference "if environment is the major cause of mental illness, the agenda of the political left is the solution". To me that is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

 

Bring up children in loving environment. Avoid prejudice, exploitation and manipulation which leaves people in abject poverty. Bring a spiritual agenda into cultural life.

 

Why is this a band aid? In fact it is only certain mechanisms which are 'left wing' - whatever system which would deliver these three would get my vote.

 

To think that it is possible to reduce or eradicate mental illness by creating the right conditions is a message of hope - surely? Would you rather think that the insane are pre-programmed to be crazy?

[goonis38]

I agree. Pharmacology can still be a useful crutch, but at least we now know it's only a crutch and not a permanent solution. It's like when you break your arm and you have to wear a cast, you don't wear the cast forever. You have to take it off at some point. I think people should be counseled in such a way that they either don't need any drugs, or if they use them, there is a plan to get off them in a set period of time.

 

Hi there,

Well my mom has suffered from scitzafrenia (sorry I know I spelled that wrong, and I don't feel like looking it up...lol)

Any how she started coming down with it in her 30s. And I have spoken to many doctors that have told me that it isn't passed down at all... I was worried to death this would get me, or my child also.

And if I tell people this, I am judged, and looked down upon, and so is she. I see it in there faces. It is the general idea of people that this kind of thing is passed down. We have four children in our family. I'm the 40 year old baby...lol and I have 51 year old brother, and 52 year old sister, and 50 year old sister, none of us have it... Thank God...

She would see monsters chasing her, tv's talking to her, voices and so on. It is so sad,...She pulled her own hair out with her hands, and through candle wax on the curtains to keep the demons out. We where very fortunate in the fact they found her the right medication... With most they never find it. And some give up and do there selfs in, being locked in a mind like that could be harder than one might think.

My mom is 71 now and is still on her medication, and I wouldn't dare take her off of it. Now this is different than in some other type problems. Like I have suffered certain things like anxiety, or things of this nature. And I agree with you 100% the medical community needs to have a plane to get people living with out medication. They are very good at pushing it for these big money making corperations. And those doctors get there kick backs, and build there practices on the backs of middle America, and we are left with our selfs, and children on all this medication...

Great thread... Melanie