| For more than a century psychiatry has been developing numerous classifications of disorders conceived primarily of symptoms, and assuming localized culprits. In this presentation, we will show data from longitudinal, prospective, blindly performed observations of offspring of patients with bipolar disorder. Of all psychiatric conditions, bipolar disorder has the strongest genetic contribution and, if the assumptions were correct, affected children should present with symptoms similar to their parents. Yet the symptoms and presentations in children are often markedly different. We will also look at how newer models that take into account a multiplicity of genetic and environmental causes more closely explain our daily observations in clinical psychiatry. The complexity revealed in modern family studies demands that psychiatrists recognize the tendency of each individual to go beyond classification systems. |