A theoretical psychological perspective on predictive testing for late onset hereditary diseases

Because of the burden of serious late onset hereditary diseases, psychological counselling is commonly included in the predictive testing procedure. We discuss the components of psychological counselling in the context of neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease, some hereditary cancers and some hereditary heart diseases. Psychological counselling should be tailored to the specific characteristics of the disease: penetrance and expression of the mutation, variability of the age at onset and efficacy of prevention and treatment, if available. Finally theories that have already been used for the psychological framing of counselling in the context of predictive testing or to formulate research hypotheses (e.g. Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, Common Sense Model of Self-regulation) are discussed.