Heritable mental disorders: You can't choose your relatives, but it is they who may really count
Ester I. Klimkeit a1a2andJohn L. Bradshaw a1a2 a1 Department of Psychological Medicine, School of Psychology, Psychiatry, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia Ester.Klimkeit@med.monash.edu.au a2 Psychological Medicine, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia John.Bradshaw@med.monash.edu.au
Keller & Miller (K&M) briefly mention and promptly dismiss the idea that genes for harmful mental disorders may confer certain advantages to affected individuals. However, the authors fail to consider that the same genes (in low doses or reduced penetrance) may be adaptive for relatives, and that this may in part explain why they are retained in the gene pool.
