The Genetics of Mental Disorders

Fülszöveg

OXFORD MONOGRAPHS ON MEDICAL GENETICS
In recent years there has been a steady advance in the genetics of mental subnormality which has gone hand in hand with better understanding of the biochemical and pathological basis of clinico-genetical syndromes. The literature, however, is scattered through many journals, and is not readily available to clinicians, teachers and research workers. This book is an attempt to provide an explanatory summary. In adult psychiatry, concerned with psychoses and neuroses, the range of observations is narrower, supported only here and there by firmly founded biochemical and pathological understanding. The problems to be faced are, accordingly, less well defined, so that there is disagreement even about their nature, not to speak of the answers which research has so far been able to provide. In this part of the work the authors have put the reader in possession of the evidence and acquainted him with the variety of interpretations which it has... Tovább

Fülszöveg

OXFORD MONOGRAPHS ON MEDICAL GENETICS
In recent years there has been a steady advance in the genetics of mental subnormality which has gone hand in hand with better understanding of the biochemical and pathological basis of clinico-genetical syndromes. The literature, however, is scattered through many journals, and is not readily available to clinicians, teachers and research workers. This book is an attempt to provide an explanatory summary. In adult psychiatry, concerned with psychoses and neuroses, the range of observations is narrower, supported only here and there by firmly founded biochemical and pathological understanding. The problems to be faced are, accordingly, less well defined, so that there is disagreement even about their nature, not to speak of the answers which research has so far been able to provide. In this part of the work the authors have put the reader in possession of the evidence and acquainted him with the variety of interpretations which it has received. The authors believe that there is strong evidence for accepting a genetical contribution to nearly all forms of psychiatric disorder, though one which varies in nature and importance from syndrome to syndrome. It is for the reader to assess the value of this evidence, and to fit the information into the models which he uses to guide his thinking. Although there are many differences between psychiatric modes of approach to adult mental disorders on the one hand and subnormality syndromes on the other, the ways in which genetical factors, chromosomal, major gene, polygenic, enter the picture are the same in hoth. Genetics is one of the unifying disciplines which emphasizes relationships between biological fields of study and helps to create channels of communication between psychiatry and the medical sciences, clinical, physiological, biochemical and pathological. Although written for the clinical psychiatrist this book will be found useful in the many neighbouring territories of neurology, general medicine, and human genetics.
oxford university press Vissza