Is schizophrenia genetic?

Schizophrenia is the prototype of all psychiatric illnesses and it is the most misunderstood.

The symptoms of schizophrenia create an atmosphere of fear and are often responsible for this misunderstanding. A lot of patients coming to me want to know why did they or their loved one develop schizophrenia.

This blog is aimed at given a brief understanding of how schizophrenia is caused.

Please note, this is not a scientific blog or an article. This is a distillation of the most studied aspects of the illness in an easily understandable manner.

Schizophrenia is an illness is caused by a combination of environmental factors and genetic factors.

What are environmental factors?

Environmental factors are a combination of all our external circumstances, situations and events that have taken place in our life.

For e.g., Good environmental factors include: positive upbringing during childhood, no physical abuse, no verbal abuse, encouraging atmosphere, balanced approach towards life, etc.

Bad environmental factors include, harsh and abusive parenting, childhood trauma such as rape, physical assault, drug abuse in childhood (including cannabis), poor upbringing, poverty, poor nutrition, etc.

Environment alone cannot cause or not cause schizophrenia.

Human beings have the capacity to withstand even very adverse environment and not be affected by any such illness. This capacity to withstand trauma is known as resilience.

What are the genetic factors?

Genetics: When someone has a history of mental/psychiatric illnesses in the family, they are at a greater risk of developing the same. This is similar to your father/mother having diabetes. Whether you live a healthy life or not, you have a very high chance of developing the same.

Similarly in psychiatric illness, family history of psychiatric illness is a very strong predictor for developing schizophrenia or any other illness.

💡 There is a 1 in 10 chance of developing schizophrenia, if you have a both parents are suffering from it. There is a 1/40 chance of developing if, if a single parent is suffering from schizophrenia.

💡 This probability is 1 in 100, if there is no prior family history of the illness.

There is no single gene that is responsible for causing schizophrenia. Multiple genes work in combination to cause it. There are multiple accounts of entire families suffering from various psychiatric illnesses, passed down from generation to generation.

Sometimes, these illnesses can even skip a generation. For e.g.,

Grandparents (one of them affected with schizophrenia)

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Their kids (might not have any illness)

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Their grandkids (can manifest with psychiatric illnesses)

Just like environmental factors, genetics are not singularly responsible for causing schizophrenia. I have personally seen many patients, who have had a positive family history, but have not developed any such illness, primarily because of a good, encouraging and positive external environment and adequate resilience.

Thus, to sum it up:

• Schizophrenia as an illness is multi factorial in nature.
• Genetic factors + Poor environment seem to be the most common cause of developing schizophrenia.
• Once schizophrenia is diagnosed, it is a life long illness.
• Schizophrenia can be treated not cured.
• Early and adequate treatment with medications can help a patient with schizophrenia, live a normal life.

Source/s:
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