Schizophrenia and genetics: a review and critique for the psychiatric nurse

Nursing authors such as McCrone and Gournay persist in the orthodox view that the genetic heritability of schizophrenia is an established scientific fact. In this article I take issue with the view they propound by way of an examination of the literature pertaining to schizophrenia and genetics. My reading of the literature suggests that the certainty they seek is not to be found in any of the scientific evidence so far put forward in support of the genetic hypothesis. Much of the early work in this field is fatally flawed and can no longer be used to support the genetic argument. More recent work tends to give increasing support to a greater role for environmental factors than is compatible with a hereditarian argument. Fifty years of research in this field has consistently failed to provide reliable scientific evidence in support of any of the genetic hypotheses relating to schizophrenia. Nurses, it is argued, should not be dispensing advice to patients on the basis of a genetic model that is at best mere hypothesis.