Dec 20 2008
A genetic “gift”
My anxiety has been bad today, so I was searching around on the internet and stumbled across this. According to the article, 41% of PTSD was related to genetics, and 61% of depressive symptoms and 69% of anxiety symptoms are related to genetics. I knew that anxiety and other forms of mental illness had a genetic component, but I never knew that the likelihood of passing it on to your children was so high. My grandmother has slight anxiety, my mother has situational anxiety, and I got slammed with full blown panic disorder and emetophobia. It makes me shudder to think what my children may end up with if I choose to have any. The article ran studies on people who were all involved in the same trauma, an earthquake, so the trauma, or possible triggering events (were there earlier triggers - we don’t know?) is somewhat controlled. It’s an interesting study, but frightening as well. At least the word is still getting out about mental illness, because I believe it’s a lot more prevalent than most people think.
Speaking of thinking, I’m going to be ignoring my negative thoughts and anxious feelings for the rest of the night. Okay, I’m at least going to try. Some chocolate might help.
