The persistence of the belief that madness is hereditary

For more than a century geneticists and social scientists have been trying to prove that mental illness is hereditary. Today most professionals and lay people believe that the hereditary nature of schizophrenia and various other mental illnesses has been confirmed by an accumulation of various evidence. However, a review of that evidence finds that is far from conclusive. It is therefore suggested that a stubborn insistence on this genetic theory of madness is itself part of the problem—a universal tendency to sweep the dark side of family life under the rug—and leads to biased research.