Question: Why do people get mental dissorders e.g. depression and anorexia? can they ever fully recover? is it becuase they develop special genes that other people don't have?

Lilian Hunt answered on 12 Mar 2014:

There are so many reasons why people can get mental disorders, and a lot of the answers are ‘we’re not entirely sure’. We know there is some link to mutations in our DNA causing them as through studying twins (who have the same DNA we can tell that these disorders can run in families. However we also know that there is some unexplained sudden cases and some families where it isn’t inherited.

There’s a lot of debate about what causes mental disorders to happen to us: the nature v nurture debate where nature is our DNA and nurture is the environment around us affecting us. It isn’t really because of special genes but more like mutations within our genes that can cause mental disorders in some cases. Our genes are made up of strings of molecules called ‘bases’ and we write them out like this: AAGCTTCA. When one or many of these bases are changed, they can cause problems within these genes that can affect things like how our brains are made up. It is believed that this can be a cause of mental illness. There are lots of studies trying to link specific genes to some mental illnesses like schizophrenia but so far none have come up with anything concrete. In addition, I’m looking at the bits of DNA in between genes to see if anything there could contribute.

Also, trauma to the brain like being hit over the head or having a lesion (like a cut) inside your brain can affect you. Very importantly, the environment around you can cause these disorders. This includes living with a lot of stress or in isolation. We know that misuse of drugs and alcohol both can contribute but in some cases these disorders can occur as the result of a traumatic life event.

Generally when we talk about someone having a mental illness we don’t say they are cured but that they can recover and manage the disorder. It is something that many people have to live with on a daily basis and for some people medication can help. For others, counseling and changing the way they think about their disorder and how they manage the symptoms means they can live a regular life. To recover from a mental illness means that you get rid of or significantly reduce the symptoms, so for some people this is actually entirely possible. On of the best things to help though is being able to talk about mental disorders and recently there was a national day dedicated to this (http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/talkday).