The nature-nurture pendulum swings again

The last time the nature-nurture pendulum reversed direction was years ago, back when I was in training. It has swung far enough in the past few years to make it fashionable to invoke genes or biology alone as the cause of most psychiatric disorders.

But not so fast. The next swing seems to have begun:

"There is robust evidence of environmentally mediated risks for psychopathology."

This from Dr Michael Rutter, perhaps the preeminent child psychiatrist of our generation, writing in this article in JAACAP. He goes on:

"Many of the risks deriving from adverse experiences are reliant on nature-nurture interplay."

His paper is intended as a call for more robust research on the role of environment in mental illness. It's tough to do that kind of research.

His call follows on the heels of the article noted here on the impact of environment on the biology of depression.

It's becoming clear that people have a genetic vulnerability to most of these disorders. But it seems to take some sort of stress to "turn on" the genes. For some, it takes a big-time stress. For others, something relatively minor can do it.

But in the nature-nurture debate, it seems as if it's almost never either-or.