Is Insanity Hereditary?

— Does the complexity of the conditions of living in this age lead to insanity?
— And what is the effect of drink? And of environment, and personal predisposition?
— Has modern medicine found a cure?

The statistics compiled in the mental hospitals of France at the beginning of 1955 showed that the number of those afflicted with insanity is on the increase. As for the causes, they range from nervous tension resulting from the complexity of the conditions of living in our present day, to excessive consumption of drink, and other things. And if we look closely, we see that these statistics cover only cases of general collapse of the mental powers, while the other cases, resulting from the crises a person meets in his life, are almost beyond counting.

There is no doubt that nothing is more feared by the human mind than the loss of memory. Insanity is a name applied to all mental illnesses alike. But there are mental illnesses that differ according to the hereditary predispositions in the person. In some cases — and these are very few — heredity stands foremost among the causes leading to loss of memory; in certain other cases it is the origin of the predispositions present in the person, which lead to loss of memory only if there is a strong external influence arising from environment and society. Mental illnesses differ according to a person's age, his personality, the sum of his habits, and his hereditary history.

It is said that the demands of our modern life have an effect on the memory, but we cannot prove this. Nor do we deny that the number of the afflicted is on the increase, though these causes may have no connection with the troubled life of the twentieth century. For the progress of medicine in our present age permits mental illnesses to be identified more clearly and more quickly than before. This, in addition to the effect the two past world wars had upon the thousands of human beings afflicted with mental illnesses.

It is reasonable to suppose that our modern life has paved the way for the appearance of a disturbance of the mental balance in those predisposed to it. Yet we cannot prove this, because we possess no clear information about the effect of this illness in earlier generations. And one of the causes for doubt is that the specialists have found some cases of mental disturbance among peoples still backward in civilization, living a simple life.

We all know that the human brain is made up of many cells upon which the functioning of the body depends. If a number of these cells are stricken by some disease, the person's mental balance is upset. Some of these diseases are hereditary, while others are the result of the effect of chemical drugs upon the brain. But the specialists have succeeded in finding treatments for most mental illnesses, among them the use of certain natural substances such as reserpine ("Réserpine"), a substance extracted from the roots of certain plants found in the hot regions of Asia, particularly in India. As for the hereditary influence, its appearance too can be forestalled by means of the modern treatments.

And there are degrees of insanity, differing according to personal predispositions, environment, and hereditary factors:

"Schizophrenia (Schizophrénie)" is the most dangerous and widespread of them. It often appears at the age of adolescence. Among the marks of the person afflicted with schizophrenia are his extreme shyness, his aversion to others and to contact with them, and his lack of concern with what goes on around him, together with the accompanying symptoms of violent anger. And it appears that

schizophrenia can only be hereditary, and does not appear in a person unless he has inherited the predispositions from his parents. But the environment and the society in which the child grows up have a great effect upon him. It has been observed, for example, that some persons afflicted with this disease were deprived of their parents' affection from their tenderest years.

However that may be, we conclude that hereditary factors play an important part in paving the way for mental disturbance in some persons, but we cannot prove that insanity is hereditary, for there are external factors that have a great effect upon the afflicted.