Schizophrenia and Genetics: End of an Illusion by Jay Joseph (.ePUB)
File Size: 1.4 MB
Schizophrenia and Genetics: The End of an Illusion by Jay Joseph
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 1.4 MB
Overview: We are approaching a period of crisis and reevaluation in the behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics fields, as attempts to discover “genes for behavior” have, with possible rare exceptions, been unsuccessful. Schizophrenia is the most investigated psychiatric disorder, yet although there have been many claims of gene “association,” decades of molecular genetic studies have failed to produce a single causative gene. In an official 2013 press release, the American Psychiatric Association admitted that psychiatry and its psychiatric genetics subfield are “still waiting” for the identification of “biological and genetic markers” for psychiatric disorders. Although some gene discovery claims have appeared since then, psychiatry continues to “wait.”
In this context, psychologist Jay Joseph focuses on the methodological shortcomings and questionable assumptions of previous schizophrenia family, twin, and adoption studies. He shows that although genetic interpretations of schizophrenia twin studies are based on the assumption that reared-together monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs grow up experiencing similar (“equal”) behavior-influencing environments, this assumption is clearly false. He concludes that schizophrenia twin studies, like schizophrenia family studies, are unable to disentangle the potential impact of genetic and environmental influences. In both types of studies, therefore, the results can be explained entirely by non-genetic factors.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Educational
Free Download links: