Is my grandmother's mental illness hereditary?

Mental illness is a common disease with a relatively high incidence rate. Mental illness is obviously hereditary and may be inherited directly or from the next generation. If a grandmother has mental illness, it is possible that the gene will be passed on to the next generation. Therefore, for those with a family history of mental illness, we must pay attention to this aspect. Let us learn about this aspect below.

Is my grandmother's mental illness hereditary?

Can mental illness be inherited from one generation to another? In life, mental illness has a high incidence rate and is hereditary. This will bring great psychological pressure to patients, who are afraid that mental illness will be inherited by their offspring. So is it true that mental illness can be inherited from one generation to another?

In general, various mental illnesses have a genetic predisposition. Mild mental illnesses, such as neurasthenia, hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobia, and anxiety disorders, have a lower chance of being inherited, while severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder, are most likely to be inherited. A grandfather's illness may be passed on to his grandson. Through a detailed investigation of 4-5 generations of direct and collateral relatives of hospitalized schizophrenia patients, the prevalence rate was 7-8 times higher than that of the general population. The results of investigations in other regions in China and abroad were roughly the same.

Moreover, the more people with the disease in a family and the closer the blood relationship to the sick person, the greater the chance of getting the disease. Taking schizophrenia as an example, if one parent is ill, the chance of their children being ill is about one in four, which means that one in four children may be ill. If both parents are ill, their children have more than a 50% chance of developing the disease.

Blood relatives of schizophrenia are not only susceptible to schizophrenia, but also to other mental illnesses, such as mental retardation and affective psychosis. Judging from the symptoms and course of events, the younger generation tends to develop the disease earlier than the previous generation, and the condition tends to worsen.

Generally speaking, if there is a mentally ill relative, his or her children will be more susceptible to illness, but this does not mean that all children will become ill. Geneticists believe that if the risk of offspring of patients with severe hereditary mental illness is greater than 10%, birth control is usually recommended. If you want to have children, you must exercise their physical fitness and willpower; create a good environment; pay attention to their thoughts and emotions at all times, and guide them in time when they encounter unpleasant things, so as not to let them form mental stress; let their children rest at the right time, avoid overwork, and do not over-strain the cerebral cortex. If a child experiences dizziness, headache, insomnia, nightmares, irritability or excitement, he or she should be taken to a psychiatric hospital for treatment as soon as possible to avoid the occurrence of mental illness.

Mental illness can be divided into congenital mental illness and acquired mental illness. The former has a very high heritability, but is acquired mental illness also hereditary?

The scope of mental illness is very broad, and it is impossible to say in general whether it is a hereditary disease or not. According to clinical research data, some mental illnesses are hereditary. For example, phenylketonuria, Down syndrome and mental retardation, their basic causes are genetic factors. Their inheritance is caused by chromosomal aberrations or hereditary metabolic defects.

According to statistics, the vast majority of mental illness patients do not have genetic factors. At the same time, the inheritance of schizophrenia is not absolute. So we have to take genetic influence into account. Although heredity plays an important role in the cause of mental illness, it is not an absolute factor. That is, children with genetic influences will not necessarily develop the disease. We cannot ignore the factors of the acquired living environment.

In fact, each of us may develop mental illness in life. It all depends on our mentality and whether we have scientific and reasonable living habits. Therefore, as a patient with acquired mental illness, you should not worry too much about whether you will inherit the disease. Actively treating the mental illness is the key.