Can mental health be genetic?
If someone in your family has a mental health condition, it doesn’t mean that you are definitely going to experience it too.
Some research shows that mental health conditions may run in families. But we don’t fully understand what causes mental illness yet, so we don’t know how much is genetic. It seems like biological factors play a part. But we also know that other things play a part, like the environment we grow up in or behaviours we pick up from the people who raise us. It could also be a combination of all these things. People with no family history of mental health problems can also experience mental illness. Whatever our upbringing or background, we all have mental health, and there are steps we can take to look after it.