After innumerable articles and books on the importance of genetic variants of P450 enzymes, it appears that the clinical pay-off just might be at hand.

Genetic counseling in psychiatry is a tricky proposition, because we are just starting to understand the complexity that underlies the genetic basis of psychiatric disease.

Obviously, genetics and psychiatry is a huge topic. But let’s begin with a simple question. What does heritability mean?

As science continues to explore the genetic components of mental illness, concerns about eugenics cannot be far behind. Long before the days of prenatal diagnosis, and difficult decisions about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, there was a debate in the pages of the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1942 about actually killing so-called “feebleminded” people.