title: Why genetic investigation of psychiatric disorders is so difficult.
abstract: Genetic investigations of psychiatric disease have historically relied on subjectively assessed disease diagnoses to define phenotypes. Recent developments in several areas have provided various new approaches to behavioral disorder phenotyping that promise to advance our understanding of the genetic and environmental etiologies of these traits. Such developments include re-evaluation of the boundaries between different psychiatric categories, implementation of quantitative neurobiological assessments that may serve as endophenotypes, generation of increasingly sophisticated animal behavioral models, and investigation of explicit environmental covariates. At the same time, movement toward large-scale, collaborative efforts is increasing the effectiveness of traditional genetic mapping approaches.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 300 Medical Plaza, Room 2265, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. CBearden@mednet.ucla.edu
authors.forename: Carrie E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Bearden
authors.forename: Victor I
authors.initials: VI
authors.lastname: Reus
authors.forename: Nelson B
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Freimer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D008040:Genetic Linkage / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics*; D051379:Mice; D010641:Phenotype