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Psychiatric illnesses share common genetic "roots"
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Six years ago, a team of geneticists from nineteen different countries began a large-scale genetic-psychiatric study aimed at studying the nature of common psychiatric diseases. The goal of the study was to determine the genetic characteristics that suggest the occurrence of nervous disorders and psychoneurological diseases. In the course of the study, doctors found out how a person's genetic characteristics could influence the occurrence of psychiatric diseases.
The experiment involved more than 35,000 mentally ill and more than 28,000 healthy adults. The authors of the study claim that to date, this is the largest study that simultaneously encompasses psychiatry, genetics, and neuropathology: both in terms of the number of people participating and in terms of time.
More than seven years ago, scientists encountered one of the mysteries that accompanies the study of psychiatric diseases: with identical genetic features, there are many psychiatric diseases. This conclusion, one might say, somewhat discouraged scientists. Even earlier, when studying, for example, diseases of twins, scientists were surprised by the fact that with identical genetic prerequisites, twins suffered from different diseases: one could be sick with schizophrenia, and the second at the same time with bipolar disorder. Families have long been known in which most of the relatives were susceptible to psychiatric diseases: family members with the same genetic mutations suffered from various psychiatric ailments.
Initially, scientists widely believed that such cases were exceptions to the rule and rare. It was the disagreements and disputes of specialists that led to the need to conduct a large-scale study that would help to clarify the patterns between human genetic characteristics and the tendency to psychiatric illnesses.
The results of a statistically correct six-year study have shown that several psychiatric diseases actually have common genetic “roots”. Doctors are talking about the following diseases: autism, depressive-manic psychosis or bipolar disorder, clinical depression, schizophrenia, clinical attention deficit and even hyperactivity. The head of the study says that at the moment, science does not know all possible genes, and further research may reveal other genes that will be common to other psychiatric diseases.
On the other hand, scientists claim that not all genetic mutations can be dangerous for a person’s mental health. Only some sections of DNA during mutation carry a possible risk that a person may be susceptible to psychiatric illnesses.
Doctors believe that this study will open new horizons for geneticists, who, after receiving the results of the experiment, will be able to study in more detail the interaction of genes and diseases of the nervous system and brain. In addition, optimistic researchers talk about the possibility of genetic therapy, with the help of which some psychiatric diseases can be prevented or cured at the genetic level. On the other hand, other researchers are sure that genetics does not contribute to the development of the disease, but only creates a "base level" that can be a fertile ground for schizophrenia, for example.