Can a mother's mental illness be passed down to her daughter?

When men and women with mental illness give birth to the next generation, they must pay attention to whether the disease will be inherited. So can a mother's mental illness be passed on to her daughter? The heritability of mental illness is very high, and it has been determined that many mental illnesses are 100% hereditary, so people with these illnesses cannot give birth to the next generation. There are also some types of mental illness that are not highly hereditary, so if you want to have children, you should do so under the guidance of a doctor.

What is the probability of inheriting mental illness? Let's not talk about how serious a mental disorder mental illness is. Just thinking about the harm that mental illness attacks can cause to the patient and his family, we must be wary of the heritability of mental illness. The illness of many mental patients always recurs, and it is difficult to truly cure them for a while, which troubles many patients. In order to make everyone better understand the genetic problems of mental illness, the following is a detailed introduction.

Let’s take schizophrenia, the main type of mental illness, as an example. Studies have shown that genetic factors play a significant role in the onset of schizophrenia. Therefore, if a schizophrenia patient has a child, the possibility of the child suffering from mental illness is definitely higher than that of an average person. However, it should be noted that normal people may also have children suffering from mental illness. If one of the parents is sick, the prevalence of their children is more than 16%. If both parents are sick, the prevalence of their children is about 40-68%.

According to statistics, the expected lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia in the general population is 0.80%, but the expected lifetime prevalence of relatives of schizophrenia patients is much higher than that of the general population. The lifetime prevalence of children whose parents have schizophrenia is 46.3%, and the lifetime prevalence of children when one of the parents is ill is 16.7%. The expected risk of siblings of schizophrenia patients is 10.1%.

That is to say, if one parent is sick, the chance of their children getting sick is about one in four, which means that one in four children may get sick. If both parents are ill, their children have more than a 50% chance of developing the disease. Blood relatives of schizophrenia are not only susceptible to the disease, but also to other mental illnesses, such as mental retardation and affective psychosis. Judging from the symptoms and course of events, the younger generation tends to develop the disease earlier than the previous generation, and the condition tends to worsen.

Common hereditary diseases are generally of three types: single-gene genetic diseases, multi-gene genetic diseases and chromosomal diseases. Most mental illnesses are related to genetic factors. Some of these mental illnesses have been confirmed to be hereditary diseases, and the mode of inheritance is also very clear, such as familial Tay-Sachs disease, phenylketonuria, Huntington's disease, congenital idiocy, hepatolenticular degeneration, schizophrenia, etc. The onset of other mental illnesses, such as hysteria, may be caused by genetic factors, but it is not yet certain to what extent genetic factors play a role and the exact mode of inheritance.

To know the question of "what is the probability of inheriting mental illness", the patient needs to be examined to determine the type of mental illness attack, because the inheritance probability of each type of mental illness attack is different. Also, don't always be troubled by the inheritance of mental illness in life. Genetic factors are the main factors leading to the onset of mental illness, but they are not the decisive factors. Therefore, you should check which type of mental illness you have to determine the probability of inheritance. I hope the above introduction will be helpful to everyone.