Nature, nurture, and psychopathology: A new look at an old topic

Abstract

The important implications for developmental psychopathology that derive from advances in psychiatric and behavioral genetics are discussed in relation to a series of mistaken stereotypes: that strong effects mean that environmental influences must be unimportant; that genes provide a limit to potential; that genetic strategies are of no value for studying environmental influences; that nature and nurture are separate; that genes for serious diseases are necessarily bad; that diseases have nothing to do with normal variation; that genetic findings will not help identify diseases; that genetic influences diminish with age; that disorders that run in families must be genetic; that disorders that seem not to run in families cannot be genetic; and that single major genes lead only to specific rare diseases that follow a Mendelian pattern. The reasons why these stereotypes are mistaken are considered in relation to genetic concepts and findings.