Post by Amtram on Apr 4, 2014 10:24:05 GMT -5
The Hunt for Endophenotypes (h/t to dizfriz, who shared it elsewhere. . .)
This is one of the reasons behind the National Institute of Health's Research Domain Criteria being created. With the symptom overlap and gene overlap found in many mental health conditions, it only makes sense to break up the rather broadly categorized phenotypes into more specified chunks. We're much more likely to find the cause of auditory hallucinations than the cause of schizophrenia and OCD or any of the other disorders that share the symptom.
What's also encouraging is that this article was published by the American Psychological Association. This is not a group that is looking for medications to treat mental health, so they have nothing to gain directly from this type of research. In fact, it might decrease the number of psychology patients. (This is in case you hear yet another person saying that ADHD or depression or whatever is a made up disease to sell drugs!)
Mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are very heritable, but the search for culprit genes can seem hopelessly complex. Perhaps dozens contribute to mental illness, and they interact with brain chemistry, brain structures and the environment in a dizzying array of ways. Even more confounding, nearly identical symptoms can result from very different behind-the-scenes malfunctions, researchers say.
"[Mental illnesses] as we currently define them are far too complex and far too multifactorial to understand," says Todd Gould, MD, a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health's Laboratory of Molecular Pathophysiology. "We need to break down and decompose these disorders into parts that can be more tractable."
In the past, scientists tried to link genes to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-defined categories, but psychologists and geneticists are now collaborating to make finer-grained distinctions, says Irving Gottesman, PhD, a University of Minnesota behavioral geneticist and psychology professor. Instead of searching for depression genes, for example, researchers are looking for genes that contribute to the emotional regulation problems that may underlie the disorder.
Shining a light on these hidden mechanisms--known as endophenotypes--is a natural fit for psychologists says Gottesman, who introduced the term in the 1970s, along with his colleague James Shields.
"Many of the features that are now being focused on are exactly the things psychologists have been studying, but in a different context," he says. "We studied them for their own value without worrying whether they would be predictors or precursors for mental illness."
"[Mental illnesses] as we currently define them are far too complex and far too multifactorial to understand," says Todd Gould, MD, a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health's Laboratory of Molecular Pathophysiology. "We need to break down and decompose these disorders into parts that can be more tractable."
In the past, scientists tried to link genes to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-defined categories, but psychologists and geneticists are now collaborating to make finer-grained distinctions, says Irving Gottesman, PhD, a University of Minnesota behavioral geneticist and psychology professor. Instead of searching for depression genes, for example, researchers are looking for genes that contribute to the emotional regulation problems that may underlie the disorder.
Shining a light on these hidden mechanisms--known as endophenotypes--is a natural fit for psychologists says Gottesman, who introduced the term in the 1970s, along with his colleague James Shields.
"Many of the features that are now being focused on are exactly the things psychologists have been studying, but in a different context," he says. "We studied them for their own value without worrying whether they would be predictors or precursors for mental illness."
This is one of the reasons behind the National Institute of Health's Research Domain Criteria being created. With the symptom overlap and gene overlap found in many mental health conditions, it only makes sense to break up the rather broadly categorized phenotypes into more specified chunks. We're much more likely to find the cause of auditory hallucinations than the cause of schizophrenia and OCD or any of the other disorders that share the symptom.
What's also encouraging is that this article was published by the American Psychological Association. This is not a group that is looking for medications to treat mental health, so they have nothing to gain directly from this type of research. In fact, it might decrease the number of psychology patients. (This is in case you hear yet another person saying that ADHD or depression or whatever is a made up disease to sell drugs!)