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health advisory Hospital Mental Health 2007-11-15 19:00:57

I'm doing a project for psychology. I know the chances of a person going crazy is greater if it runs in (one side of) the family, but how much greater?

Please put this in the context of having a perfectly normal lineage on one side of the family and a history of mental illness for the other.

Answer:

It depends on the illness.... Some illnesses have no gnetic links that we have found like Schizofrenia. And some have very strong genetic links, like bipolar, in which 60% of case have genetic markers.

Paranoid Personality Disorder is within the Schizophrenia spectrum. I dont know that you will be able to find much CONCLUSIVE evidence saying that it is genetic, but I know they are currently researching just that. Unfortunatley, we dont know much about the reasons for the onset of schizophrenia yet.

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I think it depends on the mental illness, but I thought that if you have a parent with a type of mental illness that, that doubles your chances of having it as well.

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It depends on the particular mental illness in question... you can't generalize heritability of mental illness in general.

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I can only speak from personal experience and , yes , it really does contribute a great deal to the predisposition to having a mental illness. My brother is in a mental hospital readjusting his meds, I am a mental patient, my daughter is in the care of a psychiatrist. On the maternal side of my family there is suicide and mental illness all down the line.

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Have you tried looking at old records from state mental hospitals? They usually included family history and many of them had history of illness.

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if you are predisposed to an illness, it would take a tramatic event in order for you to have it. For expamle, my friend was predisposed to aspergers syndrome, he was normal until he was about 9. The mentaly traumatic event of his parents divorce triggered his aspergers syndrome to come in.

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hullo

the use of the word crazy is unethical.

paranoid personality disorder have a weak genetic bases just like other personality disorders,you should read a textbook on this topic like the comprehensive textbook of psychiatry by CAPLAN AND SADDOK.

Dr solo

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