The complex genetics of psychiatric disorders

Abstract

Unlike many single-gene neurological disorders such as Huntington's disease, neurofibromatosis, and Rett syndrome, most psychiatric illnesses are etiologically complex. It is this complexity that stands as the major obstacle hindering risk-gene identification in psychiatry, and all of the diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive advances that such discoveries might engender. Linkage and association analyses will probably be able to resolve some of the genetic complexity of many psychiatric conditions; but it is also likely that emerging disciplines, such as systems biology and functional genomics, will inform traditional genomic methods to hasten the compilation of a full catalog of susceptibility genes for psychiatric illness. © 2006 Humana Press Inc.