Methodology of genetic research in psychiatry

Most forms of behaviour whether normal or abnormal, show a tendency to run in families. However, these can range from symptoms of dementia and movement disorder caused by the comparatively rare autosomal dominant Huntington's disease to common everyday aspects of behaviour such as religious persuasion or career choice. Normal behaviours and most common disorders do not show simple mendelian inheritance but instead have more complex patterns of transmission involving either major genes with incomplete penetrance, multiple genes of small effect, or a combination of the two. In addition, common complex phenotypes usually involve the combination of genetic and environmental factors. Therefore once family studies have shown that a disorder or trait is familial the next stage is to perform twin studies and, if possible adoption studies to investigate whether this results from shared genes, shared environment or a combination of the two.