Nature versus nurture: The contribution of Hereditary and Psychosocial risk

Nature versus nurture: The contribution of Hereditary and Psychosocial risk

Introduction

The study of mental health disorders represents a critical research to enhance understanding of the psychopathologies and psychological wellbeing such as affective disorders in humans. Statistics on the epidemiology of Affective disorder indicate that approximately 1 out of 5 people in America have affective disorders (Ng, Lim & Chee, 2020). An estimate of 20.9 million of adult population in America above 18 years of age have affective disorders. An estimate of 12.9% represent adults aged 18-29, 11.9% represent adults aged 30-44, 9.4% represent adults aged 45-59, and 3.6% represent adults above 60 years of age who have affective disorders (McEwen & Akil, 2020).

The study by Paris (2020) sought to determine whether the excess risk of the epidemiology of affective disorders are influenced by genetic factors or environmental factors; nature versus nurture. Evidence indicate that both genetic and environmental factors interact resulting to changes in humans including their susceptibility to mood disorders. Gonda et al. (2020) points out that nature is what we believe as prewiring and it is subjective to genetic inheritance and related biological factors. According to Krueger and Johnson (2021), nurture is what is influenced by external factors such as learning, experience, and exposure of an individual to environmental factors.

This essay seeks to discuss the contribution of psychosocial and genetic risk factors on bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder critically analyze the key issues that contribute to affective disorders.

The contribution of heredity to affective disorders

Genetic factors plays a significant role in influencing the predisposition to affective disorders. According to Ribeiro, Huang, Fox, and Franklin, (2018), Family history is among the common strongest risk factors for complex psychiatric diseases. An individual inherits a whole set of genes from each parent. Family history has been found to be an excellent predictor of a person’s risk of diseases because family members normally closely represent distinctive environmental and genomic connections that a person experiences from their family. The inherited genetic disparity contributes to the pathogenesis of the disease either directly or indirectly.

Evidence from the study by Opel et al (2020), many of the psychological characteristics have been found to have a heritability of approximately 50%. This is an indication that genetic difference in people account for about half of observed variations in traits. In the recent years, researchers have suggested that most of the resemblances in the family are attributed to the shared genes than the shared family environment. For instance, the susceptibility to mental disorders could have a heritability of more than 90%.

The findings of a twin study by Tistarelli (2020) determined that genetic factors impacts on an individual’s mental health. Problems of affective disorders are largely influenced by genetic factors. For instance, findings from two population -based, longitudinal Finnish twin studies revealed that genetic factors played a large role in the development of mood disorders. In a study from Virginia in male twins, similar findings indicated a correlation between hereditary and mental health disorders. Therefore, the twin studies have proposed a genetic influence on major depression.

Schiele, Gottschalk, and Domschke, (2020) points out that genetic and environmental factors are intertwined. Genetic studies have found some degree of environmental influences on the structure of the gene that results in the development of mental disorders. Similarly, a genetic study by Shadrina, Bondarenko, and Slominsky (2018) point out that some mental health disorders are epigenetic. Epigenetic involves gene expression altered by environmental factors across the lifespan. These changes can either be positive or linked with severe illness such as psychiatric disorders (Shadrina, Bondarenko & Slominsky, 2018). These epigenetic factors can be inherited and restructure cellular and developmental features across generations. This means that the epigenetic changes influenced by environmental elements can lead to some inheritances of diseases or risk of diseases. Examples of epigenetic inheritance that are related to diseases include negative effects of toxic/drug exposure or traumatic stress on the functions of the brain. The findings of a study by Legrand et al., (2021) suggests that Epigenetic changes in gene function play a significant role in bipolar diseases onset in persons established to have genetic risk. Bipolar disorder is a common disorder, which impacts around 1% of the population (Mendonça, Mangiavacchi & Rios, 2021). It is characterized by acute and chronic features such as high psychiatric and clinical comorbidities. Bipolar disorder is transmitted through a genetic factor, related with high morbid risk of the disorder among relatives (Jiang et al., 2019).

Ushakova et al., (2020) points out that polymorphism factors refers to a discontinuous genetic distinction that lead to manifestation of different types of individuals among populations of a single species. A discontinuous genetic variation splits people into two or more distinctive forms. When the occurrence of the discontinuous forms within species is high, it can be explained by the population exhibiting it, the variation, and mutation, meaning it is polymorphic. Polymorphism has been associated with major depression and cognitive functions. The interaction between gene and the environment has been found between depression and the short allele of the SLCA4 polymorphism. Studies reveals that the gene environment interaction have shown significant correlation between stressful life incidents and the risk of developing major depressive disorders. Major depressive disorder is a common mental diseases with increased levels of mortality and morbidity (Graf et al., 2021).

The contribution of psychosocial risk factors to affective disorders

The environment can impact on an individual based on their distinctive unique genetic makeup. Individuals plays an important role in choosing and shaping their environment. Genetic predispositions are expressed in the environmental context of an organism. It is important for studies to research on how environmental and genetic influences interact as opposed to trying to split the influence into which is environmental and which is genetic (Hollander et al., 2020).

According to the study by Carballo et al. (2020), despite cognitive and genetic factors being contributors to affective disorders, psychosocial factors also play a significant role in the etiology of the mental health disorders. Psychosocial risk factors such as traumatic life experiences contribute to development of affective disorders. Traumatic events refers to experiences that puts an individual or a close person to them at risk of death or severe harm. Examples of traumatic events that could lead to affective disorders include, physical or sexual abuse, a severe care accident, dating, family, or domestic violence, natural disaster such as earthquake, fire, flood, or hurricane, community violence such as bullying, assault, burglary, mugging, and shooting. Bullying has been identified as the most significant type of adverse childhood experience. It has been related with various poor outcomes including aggression, poor self-esteem, suicidality, and psychosis. When a person experiences a traumatic event, the body defenses take action and establishes a stress response that may cause an individual to experience an intense emotions, behave differently, and experience different psychical symptoms. Traumatic life events are destructive and affects people differently depending on the sociocultural factors, the meaning of the trauma to an individual, the developmental processes, the type and characteristics of the events, and the characteristic of the individual.

A similar study by de Boer et al. (2021) indicate that the current research findings indicate that young adults and adolescents are at an increased risk of mental health challenges as a result of the impact of trauma and other stressful life events. The occurrences of trauma exposure is highest among men by 60.7% and women by 51.2% (Kirtley et al., 2021). The experiences of stressful life events and childhood trauma is associated with the development of trauma related disorders include anxiety and mood disorders. Examples of common mood disorders include bipolar disorder and major depression disorder. Major depression disorder is a common mental disorder caused by a traumatic life crisis or event. Sadness or grief is a typical response to a traumatic experience. The continuous presence of depressive symptoms even after the adverse life events are over is classified as major depression. Due to the increased prevalence of major depression disorder among youths and adolescents, determining the specific psychosocial stressors associated with the disorder is crucial especially during this developmental period. Such insights are helpful in enhancing prevention and treatment efforts. Similar studies in young adults with major depression disorder have provided insights regarding the association between specific psychosocial risk factors and depression (Aldinger & Schulze, 2017).

The risk factors for bipolar disorders include childhood traumatic events. Bipolar disorder refers to occurrence of mood swings from depressive to manic episodes. When a person experiences manic episode, they may experience high levels of activity, or feel irritable or elated. Childhood trauma alters the cognitive functioning that could reduce the ability of a person to cope with later stressors, impulse control, and affect regulation. Childhood trauma relates with numerous genes belong to several different biological pathways to increase the suicidal risk or reduce the age at the onset of the disorder (Piechaczek et al., 2020).

Nature vs Nurture

According to Zaky (2015), it is widely accepted that the environment and hereditary do not function independently but rather interact. Various psychological researchers have become more interested in examining ways that nurture and nature interact. This means that for a mental disorder to develop, both appropriate environmental triggers and genetic predisposition must interact. This recognition is particularly important in psychopathology. The recent advances in genetics has triggered the need to understand the impact of biological interaction with cultural context on human behavior. A similar study by Sasaki and Kim, (2017) provides an example of nurture and nature interaction, which includes the ability to identify the pitch of a musical tone with no reference. Findings have shown that this ability mostly run in families and it is thought to have been tied to a single gene. However, it was noted that the gene alone is not adequate for development of this ability. This inherited ability can be manifested is an individual receives musical training in their early childhood.

Misiak et al., (2018) suggests there is a significant comparison on the contribution of heredity and psychosocial factors on the development of effective disorders. Finnel et al., (2020) reveals that both nurture and nature play significant roles in the developmental of mood disorders. Both Nurture and nature determines how we act, feel, think, how we make choices, and how we handle our emotions. Several studies have used a broad range of experimental methodologies to examine the comparative impact of environment and genes in mental disorders.

Studies have shown a possibility of interactive nature of both psychosocial factors and genetic factors in the development of effective disorders (Beam et al., 2020). This means that sometimes mental illness run in families, proposing that individuals who have a family member with mental health disorders are likely to develop it themselves, which is passed through genes. Studies have linked mental disorders to existing abnormalities in numerous genes, which interact with environmental factors in major ways. If a person is susceptible to mental illness through hereditary factors, they may not automatically develop the illness. The mental illness is triggered from the interaction of multiple genes with environmental factors such as traumatic events in an individual who has inherited the gene susceptible to mental illness.

The gene-environment interactions helps researchers to locate genes for the mood disorders and categorize the specific environmental conditions under which psychopathology emerges.  Evidence reveals that many mental disorders could have resulted from the combined action of various environmental factors and multiple genes of minor impact together (Mas et al., 2020). Moreover, environmental and genetic factors interact in a complex manner to exert their effects with other environmental and gene factors. Therefore, genes and environmental factors interact to generate a behavioral phenotype. The gene environment interactions takes place when the influences of the environment on a trait vary based on an individual’s genetic predispositions or when an individual’s genetic predispositions are articulated in different environments. Therefore, the study of gene environment interactions will assist in comprehending how to recognize, diagnose, and treat mental health problems thereby increasing the opportunities for establishing early intervention strategies.

Conclusion

It is evident that genetics and psychosocial factors plays an important role in the emergence of affective disorders. Affective disorders particularly major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder have been assessed in numerous genetic studies in efforts to comprehend the etiological mechanisms present in mood disorders to offer improved models of identifying, diagnosis, and treating.

The strengths of taking a nature vs nurture approach include it helps to enhance our understanding of identifying, diagnosing, and treating mental disorders. The findings will be beneficial in opening opportunities for establishing early intervention strategies for various complex mental disorders. Therefore, the interactions between psychosocial factors and genetic factors provide the most reliable method of approaching the complex mechanisms involved in the outcome and etiology of affective disorders.

References

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