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The relationship between genes and madness or depression

As we all know, psychiatrists love biological explanations of madness and depression. They are especially obsessed with the idea that madness and depression have a genetic cause. They are committed to these kinds of explanation because it allows them to pretend that when they drug and shock patients, that they have the good of the patient at heart, and are not agents of social contol.

For a start, what does it mean to say that any kind of behaviour has a 'genetic cause'? It's important to be clear about what we mean by 'genetic cause' because if you think about it, you could argue that any kind of behaviour whatsoever has a genetic cause - because without genes providing the instructions for building cells, we wouldn't have a brain or nervous system in the first place.

So what are genes and what do they actually do? Genes are segments of 46 extremely long molecules known as DNA (Deoxiribo-Nucleic-Acid) which are present in all cells of the body (only 23 in sperm or eggs). Everybody's DNA is different, but every cell in a single body (except sperm or eggs) has exactly the same DNA. A gene is the instructions for a single type of protein molecule (proteins are either structural building blocks of the body or enzymes - molecules which help biochemical reactions to happen) In any one cell, only a small proportion of its DNA is helping to produce proteins, and the rest is switched off. This is because all the cells in the body are specialised - toe cells, liver cells, brain cells - whatever - and only a small proportion of the total instructions are meant for them. Different sets of genes are switched on and off in the body as cells specialise during development, but they are also switched on and off in response to environmental stimuli - so no matter what set of genes someone has (called their genotype), interaction with the environment can cause those genes to be 'expressed' in an infinity of different ways - (their 'phenocopies' - term proposed by Professor Steven Rose)

All this activity can be compared to a manufacturing process. Now manufacturing processes can produce very general goods, like steel or electricity, or very specific goods like hair dryers.

It should be clear that genes are the instructions for a manufacturing process which produces the basic cell components for that type of cell - cellular building blocks and enzymes that lubricate cell processes. They don't determine what role that particular cell is going to play in the life of the organism - what will kind of structures and processes (of mind, of personal identity - in the case we're interested in) will actually be developed using these components, any more than a steel producing plant determines that hair-dryers, rather than ships or cars, will be produced from its steel.

So all of human behaviour is not programmed into your DNA - despite what some psychiatrists would have you believe! If you think about it for a bit, you can see that this would be quite impossible. We would be unable to learn anything new - either as individuals or as cultures have developed from the stone age to the present day. We wouldn't have conscious thought or be able to conduct a conversation. We would be robots.

We don't just act on the conscious world - we interact with it. Our genes contain the instructions for those biological mechanisms of interaction, cognition and memory through which we relate to the external world. How the individual acts in a particular situation will depend on how they perceive the world, their personal histories, and their existensial response to these things. None of all this could possibly be specified by genes coding for the biochemical milieu in which all of this takes place.

What should be clear is that genetic determination runs in a continuum between what biologists call specificity and plasticity - if gene expression is more specific there will be less interaction with the environment; if gene expression is more plastic there will be more interaction with the environment. Why do I see madness and depression as at the plastic end of the spectrum? Because my own experience of madness and depression is that it is a human experience that people go through - I have personally helped to support people through 'psychotic breakdowns' who have healed their lives by making an (extremely terrifying) journey through these experiences - they've come to term with their own inner truth and lived more fulfilled lives. If madness was at the specific end of the spectrum it would be fixed and nothing would ever change. Unfortunately when people in a psychotic a state are seized by the men in white coats and end up in the bin the drugs or worse destroy the journey they are on, which they are doomed to repeat over and over.

Having said all this, what does it mean when some psychiatric research is published which shows that you are more likely to become what psychiatrists call (w.p.c.) 'schizophrenic' (actually psychiatrists talk about 'having schizophrenia', but we'll ignore this piece of nonsense for now) if you have such and such a genetic makeup? Well, it means that if the research is valid (a big if - psychiatric research is notoriously unscientific) that you are more likely to go crazy in a way that p.c. schizophrenic. But do most of the people with that genetic makeup become 'schizophrenic'? No. Why? Because they've lived in environments which haven't led to them becoming w.p.c. 'schizophrenic'. What about all the people without that genetic makeup who become w.p.c. 'schizophrenic'? Well, the environment they lived in made them crazy.

None of this in any way suggests that madness or depression is an illness rather than a life crisis that anyone with any sensitivity or awareness can go through in this crazy, fucked up world. If some people are more genetically predisposed to reacting to this crazy fucked up world by going crazy or becoming depressed, that just shows that they're a bit more sensitive and aware that things are not right and that our social, cultural,spiritual environment needs changing. Listen to them.