what is the genesis of mental illness?

[reeay]

Etiology of mental illness as explained by scientific community (e.g., geneticists, neuropsychologist/scientists) is narrow bc they only search for evidence within the bounds of their specialized disciplines. The complexity of various mental conditions is rather daunting if you explore it through a very systemic and developmental approach. Theories such as epigenetics as the sole etiological explanation of mental illness would be reductionistic, linear thinking, and violating couple more logical fallacies.

There are evidence for strong genetic links and mental illnesses in autism, major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc. When you work with a family with long family histories of these conditions you may find that about half of the family members have diagnoses. So if we consider that these families share the same genetics and environmental conditions, what happened to the other half? I think if we go beyond science, psychology, sociology etc and delve into other domains of knowledge you may find that complexity and have a better understanding of the etiology of mental illness.

If you look at PTSD or personality disorders like borderline personality, there is genetic links there, but typically there are even stronger critical incidents that occur during important developmental milestones that makes a person more likely to develop such disorders.It all depends - how much internal resources you have, resiliency factors, social situations, etc. Plus there are highly individualized aspects of genetics that sort of explains why given high genetic heritability, no symptoms occur. Epigenetics is still something that's being understood but in the end it only explains a small portion of a complex phenomenon.