How Genetic Is Mental Illness Actually? Heritability Estimates for Mental Health The Role Genes Play

personally I am breaking the chain by not having kids, makes me sad . but…..

Thanks, Emma, for another informative, insightful, and caring video. You mention looking into family history, but that is sometimes a cloudy area, as people in previous generations often didn't discuss or even acknowledge mental and emotional struggles of their own or their relatives. At least that has been my experience. Only though many years of introspection, therapy, and reflection on family behaviors over the years have I realized that it's not 'just me.' Thank you for continuing to lessen the stigma of mental health issues for everyone and their families!

What if what one has to accept is that one will be living with depression for all of one’s life? It can be terrible frustrating to be perpetually told one will get better and to feel one has let family, friends, and doctors down by not getting better.

And what can those of us who already have a mental illness do with this information about genetics? I thoroughly agree that we all need to work on preventing illnesses through safe homes, good nutrition, etc., but what if that horse has already left the barn?

I developed anxiety disorder after getting Covid

I’ve been understanding and putting a name to a lot about my limiting beliefs and inner wounds from my childhood. My Mum has residual grief from before I was born and she has general anxiety. She has had numerous breakdowns throughout my childhood that I had to witness. I developed social anxiety that starting in primary school, because of how my Mum would act towards me. This was not in my genes but is how I was raised, in a house with a glass half full attitude and arguments that were too much for my sensitive nature. I developed diabetes at 16, this was because my nervous system took on all that heaviness in the environment. I’m breaking the limiting beliefs for myself and my children, I’ve got a better understanding of what children need to thrive. 💖
Thank you for your channel, you are a source of information for many.

There is absolutely no way heritability is that high. Just looking at ADHD and anxiety, which have exploded in the last few decades, there's no such thing as a gene that can become expressed so strongly in such a short time. Just like with doctors trying to say myopia is a genetic condition, when it's quite obviously environmental. The same applies to mental illness. When you grow up in a family of anxious people, you pick up that anxiety. When you grow up in a family of highly educated people who developed myopia, you pick up the same indoor, close work habits and develop myopia.

Someone who explains this really well — and, I would say, the foremost expert on the topic — is Gabor Mate. He makes the link between childhood trauma, and ADHD as a way to distract yourself and cope with the painful experiences, very clear, drawing on his decades of experience as a psychologist helping addicts.

Thank you. I am struggling with this topic in therapy right now and glad I stumbled upon the video.

Merry Christmas

Please understand this is what some scientist say. This is not proven 💯 Emma did mention one could still be happy with proper care of oneself. Just because it runs in your family doesn’t mean one is going to get it. I feel epigentics are awakened or turned on with life experiences, environment etc in some cases not always. That is the point here Not Always. There is hope! Remember our thought process plays a big part. If one thinks there is no hope in curing anxiety etc then there won’t be. I believe there are some mental disorders that are harder to treat like BD or Sch and medication is needed but Dep, anx, and so many others that are treatable. Like Emma mentioned there is a bigger picture. There is still a lot to research and science advances through out the years. Therapy, nutrition, exercise, mental thought and family support are very helpful. Our brains are complex and marvelous that there is still so much to research. Like Emma has mentioned “break the chain”. 🙏

I have found a lot of value in what little of your content I have consumed thus far. This one in particular is interesting and a bit life-affirming.
I have a child who is 15 months old, but let me tell you a bit about his parents. We were both raised in trauma, which impacted our long-term mental health. My trauma is severe enough that diagnostics cannot currently tell us if I have ADHD or Autism, because those conditions share too many similarities to PTSD and especially severe PTSD. My spouse has severe ADHD in addition to his PTSD. We worried that having a child would be reckless as it is unknown how many factors we can control to reduce their impact on our child. The first step in finding a healthier balance in our approach was to look at the propensity for genetic contribution. It is unlikely that our child will experience the same trauma we did as our circumstances are significantly different and we have both continued to put in work towards recovering from that trauma, but as ADHD is less impacted by environment we knew we would need to be prepared for that.
At 9 months old our child started to exhibit very clear symptoms of severe ADHD. When we mentioned this to the pediatrician it was dismissed, and we assume that is because they are accustomed to parents guided by emotion rather than research and logic. We don't feel like failures that our child may have ADHD . . . unless we refuse to acknowledge it and thus refuse to accommodate it. So we began researching ADHD friendly living and organizing methods (How To ADHD is a FANTASTIC channel). We went from a child with erratic energy and an insane hyper-focus (if our child is interested in something there is no way to distract away from that interest regardless of how much time has passed, which is a substantial difference from the attention span of most neurotypical toddlers) to a child who was able to move around independently and communicate the stimuli required to function in that moment.
This is not to say that our child will not later develop some kind of anxiety or other mental illness, but because we know and understand the nature of generational trauma we anticipate integrating mental health care into our child's routine healthcare around the age of 5. This is an exercise in saying "where your parents fail there are healthy options to make up for it."
Our job as parents is not to protect our children from everything, but to understand where risk needs to be mitigated and teach them how to manage that risk on their own over time. Our ultimate mindset about it is that it is our job to prepare our child for a world where we do not exist. We are older parents and the likelihood our child will lose us earlier than peers the same age lose their parents is significantly greater. So we need to teach adaptive skills and provide reliable resources for long-term success.
The end. lol

Here is truth. The only thing that truly cures anxiety is Jesus Christ. If you get to know him, and completely trust him, you anxiety will be diminished. He takes away fear from your life. He calls it the "peace that surpasses ALL understanding", including any anxiety medication. "If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.". remember that the RAPTURE is going to happen soon, the signs are here.

I understand and appreciate that mental illness heritability is nuanced and lots of factors play a role, but when I look at those in my family with chronic depression (both my grandmothers, one grandfather, my aunt on my father's side, my mother, and now me) it makes me not want to have children.

I started having OCD and depression when i was 8, maybe 9 years old. I didn't have the best childhood, but it definitely wasn't so bad to explain why these terrible disorders developed. There are people who have a childhood 20 times worse than mine who don't develop mental illness. I am convinced that genetics played an essential part in it. As far as i understand, current research strongly implies that epigenetics play a key role. The environment, e.g. being bullied, seems to change the epigenome, which then influences how genes are expressed.

Epigenetics seem to be the mediator between genes and the environment. That would explain why some people with similar genes get a disorder and some don't. Their environment differs, which changes their epigenome, which changes their gene expression.

In my opinion we should research gene therapy for psychiatric disorders much more. I know it still sounds like science fiction to many people, but it's becoming more and more realistic. Scientists already used gene therapy to strongly reduce depression in mice and – what's even more interesting – only a few months ago another research team used epigenome editing to reverse changes in mice's epigenome caused by traumatic events. When they did that, the mice's anxiety seemed to return to normal levels. Imagine a world in which no one had to suffer from depression, anxiety disorder etc. I really hope this will become a treatment option in the future.

My dad and I are almost identical personality wise and mental health wise, it’s scary. My little brother was diagnosed with adhd and autism a few years ago, and since then I’ve been researching and have been diagnosed with inattentive adhd, on top of the SAD diagnosis I already had. I’ve been really struggling with my adhd as of late and he’s been helping me through it, and most of the advice he gives is through relatable stories, or because he went through the same thing. He’ll be telling me about something that happened to him or how he used to act in certain situations and I’ll sit there stunned because he just described almost exactly what I’m feeling. Funny thing too, I remember when I first brought up my symptoms when I was looking to get diagnosed, he said, “well if that’s adhd, then I’ve got it too, kid”

tldr, my dad’s brain got copy and pasted into me

Both sides of my parents families suffered from most of your list. I've been living with the same illnessses since 1976. Its been a long ride.

Pseudoscience

my grandma had depression and autism, my great grandma had.. no issues as far as I know, but then again I suspect she had depression or some sort of mood disorder, my great grandpa mustve had a problem because he was abusive, maybe war trauma i dunno, my great aunt has a depression disorder, i think two people in my family commited suicide, one is in jail, my great uncle has autism, my father has autism, my grandma on my mom's side had anxiety, my dad's cousin has bipolar, psychosis, severe disorders, and her daughter has autism, my other cousin i think my 2x cousin has a unspecficed anxiety disorder my nephew has autism, my sister has PTSD, my niece has depression disorder and anxiety I also think my dad's cousin also has… maybe like, a anxiety disorder or something, i dunno, I think its a mood disorder because she is my dad's cousin's sister, and then there is me. lol. I have depression disorder, autism, a previous episode of psychosis (i don't have psychosis anymore but i have anxiety about getting psychosis???/anxiety lol) and ocd/anxiety I DONT EVEN KNOW WHERE THE OCD CAME FROM! no one in my family has it! as far as I know of course, how lucky am i?

My girlfriend, her mother, and grandmother all have bad mental illness and it's pretty bad. I'm sure it's genetic…

My dr said the mthfr c677t homozygous gene & Comt gene are highest for bipolar schizophrenia depression ocd adhd.