Do Anxiety and Panic Disorders (specifcally Depersonalization) have genetic roots to them?

(Keep in mind that you mean “its genetic roots.” It’s = it is.)

http://www.schizophrenia.com/research/hereditygen.htm

@gailcalled – Keep in mind that it’s possible to make typo’s. I know what a contraction is, congratulations on showing everyone that you do too!

From a personal perspective, my entire family tree is plagued by anxiety disorders (including me). I have a hard time believing that it isn’t somehow hereditary. However, that doesn’t mean that the anxiety disorder itself is genetic – just that the predisposition towards a nervous personality type is there. Again, from examining my own family, I can say that each one of us began having panic attacks as a result of environmental influence (stress, etc.), and the ones that didn’t were those that learned to deal with being nervous-by-nature early on.

So, while the predisposition can be hereditary, it doesn’t necessarily mean there will be an anxiety disorder. Furthermore, people that do not have any type of genetic predisposition to anxiety can develop anxiety disorders due to environmental factors (a rape victim developing PTSD, for example).

That’s just my take on the situation… I’d wait for some psych majors to roll around. Good luck on the paper :)

@borderline_blonde – Thank you for your answer GA.

Why not learn how to do some research on the subject? You can try PubMed or PsychInfo, for a start.

Again drawing on my own family, I definitely believe the predisposition is hereditary.

@dpworkin – I do not see the importance of “learning” how to do research when it has already been done. Possibly I have been unable to find a certain aspect of my research through the sources you have listed. Jumping straight to being a rude contributor to the answer is not necessary.

@augustlan – Thank you for your answer!

@VanCityKid I was trying to assist you. I’m sorry you thought I was being rude. By rejecting my suggestion you cut yourself off from thousands of critically important peer-reviewed article in hundreds of journals. I’m guessing from your attitude that you are young, so your ignorance is forgivable. If you are a college student, perhaps not so much.

Just a personal opinion but I think that it’s really hard to tell. Mental illnesses weren’t always and still arent’ always well diagnosed. You can have several doctors examine the same patient and they will sometimes come up with a different diagnosis. Also there are times when there seems to be no family history and it will suddenly pop up. I have a friend who says she has no family history of mental illness in either side of the family and yet she has two daughters with a long list of mental problems. She nor her husband did drugs although he was an alcoholic later in the marriage and had anger problems. It could be there is a history somewhere only it may have been diagnosed as a nervous break down and just never spoken about.
Some people even think that it may be linked to pesticides in our food or even just a brain chemical melt down from our enviroment. Some think its nurture. Ask a million people get a million opinions.
Personally I think some may just be passed down the same way certain instincts are passed down or not passed down at all. Like the way most babies will cry to high heaven when you stare at them without smiling (survival instinct) and some may not be phased at all. It could be with evolution some things in our brain get rewired.

I think genetics only plays a small role. I would say it’s the context, situation and experiences of the individual that bring about such disorders. Sorry I can’t give you any examples of genes that are linked to certain psychological disorders, you may need to ask an expert on this.

@VanCityKid Others have already done the research, but you still have to locate their works and read them. Maybe you are just looking for us to look them up and give our own synopsis, essentially doing the grunt work for you? I can’t figure out why else you would ask and then dismiss @dpworkin‘s helpful links.

No personal opinions you receive here will be acceptable for your paper. How would you cite the personal opinion of ”@user at fluther.com”? There is no way you could do that and be taken seriously.

@VanCityKid pubmed is really cool, but it helps to have some training and experience with it. Its a database with all medical publications (and many scientific too). You can search it almost as easily as Google.

I just snagged this recent publication – but it’s not full text.

Definitely anxiety disorder can have a genetic component.

I like to look up these sort of things.. I’ll keep lookin

@VanCityKid this article cautions us not to expect much from genetic studies, as mentioned above there is a “nature (gene) versus nurture (childhood experience)” argument in the model for the origin of mental illness.

@VanCityKid this article is more general, full text article that discusses the relationship between discovered genes and mental illness. A very good read (these are technical).

this one talks more about schizophrenia – same idea though – very interesting – leaving for future reference. Comparing neuro-imaging with rare genetic syndromes that have known mental illness associations. (I’m particularly fond of william’s – it’s said that is how politician’s are made – the “cocktail party” personality with mental retardation ; ))

I wanted to post it just because of its scientific relevance. I may want to find it later.

What follows is a list of candidate genes for anxiety related syndromes:

Go to the pub med main page here

And paste this list of ID’s into the search window

19266052
19088739
18974851
18639233
18607529

@DrMC You’re making him paste things, and read stuff ‘n’ shit? How rude!

@VanCityKid this link shows pubmed tweeked to search for actual genes using OMIM

You put “anxiety disorder” in the search box, and change the database to OMIM – online mendallian inheritance in man.

OMIM is very cool if you get a hit. You can crawl along the chromosome.

@dpworkin nah, I have a special interest in this stuff. Also, most layman would have difficulty without some training.

Once you know your way around.

@DrMC: What about a college student who is writing a research paper? Isn’t doing one’s own research the path from ignorance to competency? And isn’t that called “training”?

The Kid is not going to see patients or make professional diagnoses; he’s a freshman in college. This is his first venture onto the path of learning to know his way around, isn’t it?

@dpworkin – All right, sorry for the misconception. I have checked Pubmed, PsychInfo, Medscape, and a lot of other of Ebsco’s databases, there is not very much on genetics when it comes to Anxiety, they usually focus on other aspects of anxiety.

@Supacase – It’s my best understanding that you don’t understand how these search engines work. I have checked @dpworkin ‘s suggestions long before I asked this question. These journals are very expensive believe it or not and my school only subscribes to a certain amount, I only have a limited view of what is actually out there, I’m coming on here to see if anybody had access to any other knowledge outside of these already listed.

@DrMC – I do already know how to use Pubmed and thanks for the links but my school doesn’t subscribe to those journals and I cannot view them.

I posted this question hoping to get answers which differ completely from what I am getting as I believe this will continue I am abandoning this question.

I think anxiety is more conditioned (a result of life experiences) than genetic, but I am not a doctor and can only speak from experience (my own and other people I know who suffer from clinical anxiety, both general and social). However, there are other disorders that I do believe are more hereditary than genetic, such as schizophrenia, depression, and OCD.

EDIT: Just noticed the OP is “abandoning” the question.. ah well. By the way, kind of rude, considering folks were trying to help you.

@VanCityKid most of those articles were linked to full papers. There is a way to filter pubmed to do that. If this is a paper, I almost wrote it for you, it’s a very interesting question (to me) – but you have to be willing to go open the links, as others are saying.

@gailcalled I think a college student interested in really digging in would use the starts above to go further – since he wasn’t initially happy with the pubmed suggestion. Sometimes seeing how it can produce is enough for some. Since the question asked for an answer and not a “go get it yourself” I thought I’d try to counterspin constructively.

@VanCityKid can you be more specific about exactly what you are looking for?

@VanCityKid – way to bite the hand that feeds you! I’m so glad that you know the difference between a typo and a contraction wrt @gailcalled‘s post, but you might want to read up on the usage of apostrophes and pluralization (e.g. typo’s, note Google’s “did you mean…?” ;)

At the risk of getting my own head snapped off for providing an answer you’ve already considered – there was an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine recently that touches on this: Understanding the Anxious Mind.

Good luck with your paper. Next time you don’t want suggestions of where to look, why not mention in the question where you’ve already looked?

Correction to my above post.. should be more hereditary than conditioned. Dur.

it’s kinda funny because i actually have anxiety issues that often turn to panic attacks. my mother also has these problems but mine was actually brought upon myself. i use to drink energy drinks (about 3) every day. one day i ended up in the hospital and they told me that i screwed up my heart with my sugar intake and i’m allergic to sugar? which i think just means my heart reacts horribly to it. my moms ex boyfriend from a while back didn’t have panic attacks until he started doing drugs when he was younger and as he got older even after he had quit the drugs he still had them and they kept getting worse. he had a stroke a couple months ago.

i forgot to add because i know my heart beats abnormally fast from being too hyper or having too much sugar or just walking i start to worry about my heart, and thats when my anxiety turn to panic attacks and sometimes my finger tips or arms go numb. i dont know why that is though.