Are Depression And Anxiety Genetic? 💙

Are depression and anxiety genetic? This is a question that comes up quite often and it's not very simple to answer. Yes there's a genetic component to depression and anxiety but it's not the same as if there's one gene and if you have the gene you get depression or anxiety and if you don't have the gene you don't. 💙

There are illnesses like that, there's cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease and if you have the faulty gene then you get those diseases and that's not the case for anxiety and depression. In fact of all the mental disorders and mental illnesses anxiety and depression are the least inheritable. 💙

The most inheritable are things like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, OCD, autistic spectrum disorder. So it seems to be the case that your genes do play a role but it's quite a small role compared to other mental illnesses and it seems like it's spread out across multiple genes. 💙