Reply to Mentally ill estranged family member - how much should I be worried?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Mentally ill estranged family member - how much should I be worried?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You ought to worry more about the heritability of mental illness.  Your DC is far more likely to develop a mental illness than your FIL showing up on your doorstep.  You want to worry?  Worry about something more likely to happen.[/quote]

You are not nice.  First of all, you have NO idea how to calculate what the risk of her FIL showing up is.  Second, it's really unnecessary to perpetuate the fear of heritability of MI.  While, it's true that the risk of inheriting an MI increases when a first degree relative has MI (and increases, but less so, when a second degree relative has MI), the overall risk is still quite low.  For example, while bipolar has about a 1/2 to 1 1/2 % risk in the general population and the risk increases about 8-fold, the lifetime risk is still only about 5-10%.  So there is a 90%+ chance that a person with a BP first degree relative will NOT get BP

We also know that genetic "input" is likely multi-factoral (i.e. more than one gene at work) and that MI is not solely determined by genes but also to a high degree by environment.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics