# ‘Almost nothing is firmly established’: A History of Heredity and Genetics in Mental Health Science

## TL;DR

This paper reviews the history of how genetics has been used to explain mental health issues, showing how social and political factors have shaped research over time.

## Contribution

The paper provides a critical historical analysis of the role of genetics in mental health science from the 19th century to today.

## Key findings

- Early asylum statistics were used to argue for heredity's role in mental illness.
- Genetic research on mental health has been influenced by social and political contexts.
- Modern techniques like GWAS and epigenetics continue the search for genetic causes.

## Abstract

For more than a century, scientists have tried to find the key to causation of mental ill health in heredity and genetics. The difficulty of finding clear and actionable answers in our genes has not stopped them looking. This history offers important context to understanding mental health science today.

This article explores the main themes in research on genetics and inheritance in psychiatry from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present day, to address the question: what is the history of genetics as a causative explanation in mental health science? We take a critical historical approach to the literature, interrogating primary and secondary material for the light it brings to the research question, while considering the social and historical context.

We begin with the statistics gathered in asylums and used to ‘prove’ the importance of heredity in mental ill health. We then move through early twentieth century Mendelian models of mental inheritance, the eugenics movement, the influence of social psychiatry, new classifications and techniques of the postwar era, the Human Genome Project and Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and epigenetics. Setting these themes in historical context shows that this research was often popular because of wider social, political and cultural issues, which impacted the views of scientists just as they did those of policymakers, journalists and the general public.

We argue that attempting to unpick this complex history is essential to the modern ethics of mental health and genetics, as well as helping to focus our efforts to better understand causation in mental ill-health.