Mental Health Insights

Image A: therapy session Week 9 - What evidence supports the role of nature and nurture interplay in effectiveness of psychological interventions? Therapy-genetics is a novel research area, it is the study of genetic markers that predict response to psychological therapy. Lester and colleagues (2012) investigated whether SNPs in nerve growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor genes predict response to cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), in anxiety-disordered childre

Image A: pills being distributed out of a bottle into a hand Week 8 - Genes are not our destiny. Explain using addiction as an example. A study conducted by Enoch (2013) investigated the influence of the GABRA2 gene and childhood trauma on addiction vulnerability, in a sample of African American men (N=635). The GABRA2 gene is one of the ionotropic receptors which relates to behavioural disorders, including substance dependence. In the present study, childhood trauma had the

Image A: colourful abstract shapes Week 7 - What is known about epigenetic effects of the rearing environment on mental health? Extensive epidemiological studies suggest that adult disease risk is associated with adverse environmental conditions early in development. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the mechanisms behind these relationships were unclear, but it was hypothesised that epigenetic dysregulation was involved. By 2013, DNA methylation emerged as a potential mechanism for

Week 6 - Which models can explain the role of gene-environment interaction in mental health? Gene-environment interactions (GxE) are situations where genetic influences on behaviour depend on the environment. The impact of a genotype on disorder risk is different in people with different environmental exposure. These types of interactions are hypothesised by the diathesis-stress framework, which implies that genetic vulnerability interacts with life stressors to trigger ment