Saturday, July 7, 2012

Inheritance? 遺傳?


I posted a question to my friends (who are studying psychology/counseling):


Are disorders, such as violent behavior, depression, compulsive behavior disorder or harmful behavior to self or other will be inherited by future generations? Which branch of psychology talks about genetic inheritance?


我有一個疑惑,曾與學心理輔導的朋友們討論:


有爆力或憂鬱症或強迫症(OCD)或虐待.. 者會基因遺傳給下一代嗎?請問在心理學的理論中,有那一派談到這些嗎?


I wanted to share this response (I got his permission):


The Biopsychosocial Model has clearly explained this. "Genetic inheritance" is only one of the domains that contributed to mental disorders. Mental disorders are hardly ever limited to just one domain of human experience.

Although many research had suggested many mental disorders clients had family history, this does not implies that genetic inheritance is the main contributing factors to all kind of mental disorders. When someone has mentally ill in a family, a child in the family would experience more stress than most of his/her peers (Psychological Domain) and probably has an atypical growing up environment (Social Domain). When these psycho-social factors, combined with the biological predisposing factors, they increase the likelihood of an individual to be a mental health service user.

In other words, if the offspring of mental health service users could understand their parents' condition, knowing how the illness had affected them, unconditionally accept their family environment, learning to cope and response to life challenges effectively, as well as having healthy interpersonal and social supports, they would able to greatly decrease their likelihood of 'inheriting' mental disorders from their parents.


我得到回應者的允許,分享他的回應:


Biopsychosocial Theory 清楚的説明了這一點。所謂的基因遺傳,只是三大精神病導因的其中之一。單單具備生物基因遺傳的條件,一般是不足以引發精神病的。
雖然許多研究發現,許多精神疾患者都有家族史,但這並不一定意味著基因遺傳是主要因素。若家中有人患上精神疾患,一般上孩子的成長歷程會承受其他同齡孩子較大的壓力(心理因素)、會有非典型的成長環境(社會因素)。當這心理與社會因素,再結合先天性的生物因素風險,發病的幾率就會相對提高。
換句話說,精神疾患者的下一代,只要及早了解其父母的疾病以及疾病對他們的影響,全然接納自己的家庭環境,學習有效地處理及回應生活上的種種挑戰,再加上健康的人際關係及社會支持,那一般上發病幾率會是相對較低的。


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