Interviewee: Kay Jamison. Twin studies have clearly shown a strong genetic component to manic depression. Kay Jamison discusses the highs and lows of manic depression, the link between mania and creativity, and the heritability of the disorder. (DNAi Location: Chronicle > Living with eugenics > Living with depression > Manic depression as a genetic disorder)

I don't have perhaps some of the difficulties with seeing that this is a genetic illness as others do, perhaps because I really, my background is enough in science that it just always struck me once I learned about it, it seemed very clear that the twin studies that had been done years ago were really quite clear, the evidence was really quite clear, it wasn't like it was sort of maybe, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. And it never struck me one way or another, a good thing or a bad thing, until recently, in which case it struck me as a good thing because you could learn about it from understanding the genetics of it. But I didn't see it as any kind of like family curse or anything of the sort, I saw it as something that ran in our family and it was something to be aware of after a certain point. manic depression as a genetic disorder. Twin studies have clearly shown a strong genetic component to manic depression. Living with manic depression. Kay Jamison describes her family pedigree, which is strikingly similar to the Kallikak pedigree that fed the fears of the eugenics movement that mental illness threatened to ruin the American germ plasm.

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