That’s a good point, I did not mean to imply that these mental illnesses are completely unaffected by environmental factors. In addition, in case of some illnesses such as depression, there are in fact many different causes that can lead to similar symptoms, so the true picture is a lot more complex (and is still not entirely well understood).
However, this is very different from saying something like “schizophrenia is completely environmental”, or even “if only people had some basic critical thinking skills, they’d never become depressed”, which is how I interpreted Gatto’s claims.
For example even with a relatively low heritability rate, millions of people would still contract schizophrenia every year worldwide—especially since many of the adverse life experiences that can trigger it are unavoidable. No amount of critical thinking will reduce the number of victims to zero. And that’s just one specific disease among many, and we’re not even getting into more severe cases such as Down’s Syndrome. If Gatto thinks otherwise, then he’s being hopelessly naive.
That’s a good point, I did not mean to imply that these mental illnesses are completely unaffected by environmental factors. In addition, in case of some illnesses such as depression, there are in fact many different causes that can lead to similar symptoms, so the true picture is a lot more complex (and is still not entirely well understood).
However, this is very different from saying something like “schizophrenia is completely environmental”, or even “if only people had some basic critical thinking skills, they’d never become depressed”, which is how I interpreted Gatto’s claims.
For example even with a relatively low heritability rate, millions of people would still contract schizophrenia every year worldwide—especially since many of the adverse life experiences that can trigger it are unavoidable. No amount of critical thinking will reduce the number of victims to zero. And that’s just one specific disease among many, and we’re not even getting into more severe cases such as Down’s Syndrome. If Gatto thinks otherwise, then he’s being hopelessly naive.