Abstract

The most common idea about the relationship between genes and environment in the field of mental illness is that environment may favor or hinder the expression of genes predisposing to mental illness, so bringing to different phenotypes. The paper supports a different hypothesis, that the relationship between genes and environment be fully interactive, that is certain genes may cause increased vulnerability to an adverse environment, but in other conditions increased sensitivity to the beneficial effects of a positive environment. Rather than genetic vulnerability the most plausible model could be biological sensitivity to context. This could explain why genes which are found to be associated with mental illness were not eliminated by evolution, since when interacting with favorable environments they may be associated with a better than average performance in certain fields. The paper reviews some studies which support this hypothesis: genes found in individuals with mental illness appeared associated, when measured in the general population or in different groups, with higher creativity, better response to psychotherapy, better capacity for scientific discovery, better performance in STEM professions