Why genetic investigation of psychiatric disorders is so difficult

Genetic investigations of psychiatric disease have historically relied on subjectively assessed disease diagnoses to define phenotypes. Recent developments in several areas have provided various new approaches to behavioral disorder phenotyping that promise to advance our understanding of the genetic and environmental etiologies of these traits. Such developments include re-evaluation of the boundaries between different psychiatric categories, implementation of quantitative neurobiological assessments that may serve as endophenotypes, generation of increasingly sophisticated animal behavioral models, and investigation of explicit environmental covariates. At the same time, movement toward large-scale, collaborative efforts is increasing the effectiveness of traditional genetic mapping approaches.