![]() Others argue that the p factor does not necessarily reflect a common cause of psychiatric illness. “If you can find a biology that the p factor is working through, then in theory, if you could find ways to target the biology,” the resulting treatment would likely be effective for many psychiatric disorders, Gandal says. Their efforts to uncover the genes or brain signatures that may underlie the p factor could inch us closer to a deeper understanding of psychiatric illness. Some scientists have already cast off the DSM’s blinkers. “We should be looking at psychopathology without the blinkers of the DSM,” says Patrick McGorry, a psychiatrist and professor of youth mental health at the University of Melbourne in Australia. At the very least, some experts say, mental health research, including clinical trials of treatments, should break free of its DSM silos and encompass multiple diagnoses. “I think this will be the end of diagnostic classification schemes,” Plomin says.Īlthough that is not likely to happen soon, given that doctors and insurers rely on the DSM’s diagnostic codes, researchers have proposed alternative schemes that are more in line with the concept of p. The concept of p, Caspi says, “is almost a clarion call for focusing on what is common rather than being preoccupied with what is distinct.”Ī few researchers are calling for the erasure of hard boundaries between psychiatric conditions, which could have dramatic consequences for both the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders. And it suggests that what joins mental health conditions is at least as important as what divides them. The concept is akin to general cognitive ability, or g, which predicts scores on tests of skills such as spatial ability or verbal fluency. In fact, it explains about 40 percent of the risk. This shared tendency is not a minor contributor to the extent to which someone develops symptoms of mental illness. They call this predisposition the general psychopathology factor, or p factor. ![]() Put another way, scientists say there exists a propensity to develop any of a range of psychiatric problems. Those conditions seem to have a distinct genetic and biological origin, in contrast to the “deeply interconnected nature for psychiatric disorders,” according to findings published in 2018. The same is not true of most neurological disorders, such as epilepsy or multiple sclerosis. In fact, it’s difficult to find specific causes of any sort, be they genetic or environmental, for individual psychiatric disorders, says Duke University psychologist Avshalom Caspi. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. “The same genes are affecting a lot of different disorders.” On supporting science journalism “Everything is genetically correlated,” says Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King’s College London. What’s more, as the family patterns suggest, the genes linked with these conditions overlap. Individuals with mental disorders often have symptoms of many different conditions, either simultaneously or at different times in their lives. ![]() Yet increasing evidence suggests the lines between them are blurry at best. ![]() The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM), the mental health field’s diagnostic standard, describes nearly 300 distinct mental disorders, each with its own characteristic symptoms. “If one person, say, has a diagnosis of schizophrenia in their family, not only are other people in the extended family more likely to have diagnosis of schizophrenia but they are also more likely to have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, autism or major depression,” Gandal says. Their mother has anxiety and depression and their father has depression. One of her brothers is autistic and another has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Tourette syndrome. in biostatistics came to see psychiatrist Michael Gandal with symptoms of psychosis, she became the fifth person in her immediate family to be diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental or psychiatric condition- in her case, schizophrenia. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |