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Nature or nurture?

Psychiatrist delivers talk on mind, body, environment interactions in context of development

An illustration of the human brain from the early 1900s text "Elements of Physiological Psychology" is shown. (Image courtesy of the Internet Book Archive)

MARQUETTE — Is it nature or nurture that makes us who we are?

This age-old question was discussed at a talk given by Dr. Jed Magen, associate professor and chair of the department of psychiatry at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine.

The talk, which was aimed at the community and university alike, was held Thursday night at Northern Michigan University as part of the Your Health Lecture series, sponsored by NMU, MSU’s College of Human Medicine, UP Health System – Marquette and the Superior Health Foundation.

Magen, who has decades of experience as a clinician, researcher and professor in the field of psychiatry, said nature or nurture alone cannot account for how humans develop and interact with the world — rather, it’s the interaction between our environment and our biology that makes us who we are.

“Is it your environment, or is it your biology? Well, the problem is, it’s really both. And you can’t really separate them out, especially in a field like psychiatry.

This interaction between nature and nurture starts before we leave the womb and impacts us through development as we grow, change and become more complex, he said.

Early experiences — and their interactions with a person’s biology — can have significant impacts on physical and mental health, Magen said.

In terms of child development and mental health, this is a particularly important thing to consider, he said.

“Early neglect and abuse results in lasting and important changes in brain function,” he said. “And psychiatric disorders in childhood are clearly risk factors for later psychiatric disorders.”

These experiences early in life are so important, Magen said, because they can stick with a person throughout their lifetime.

“The body remembers, the brain remembers,” he said.

With this in mind, mental health professionals use biological and environmental interventions to help those who come from situations of abuse and neglect recover from these early experiences.

“Their brains are probably a little different, their neurobiology is a little bit different,” he said. “And what we’re struggling to do all the time is give them medications to try to change some of that neurobiology and try to put them in school settings that are going to be supportive of them and try to work with their often foster parents or adoptive parents to try to change the environmental circumstances.”

While a person’s environment has significant impacts on development and mental health Magen also emphasized the importance of genetics — certain genetic factors can be protective or confer greater risk for psychiatric disorders.

However, he said, it’s important to remember that there’s no single gene that confers absolute risk or protection for a given psychiatric disorder — it’s a combination of many genes, as well as a person’s past and current environment, that leads to a given mental health outcome.

While we can’t alter our genetics or our early experiences, Magen said, we can try to alter our current environments to include more protective factors, such as exercise, healthy eating and strong social support networks. Trying to reduce risk factors, such as substance use and abuse, isolation, untreated physical health issues and unhealthy coping mechanisms, can also be helpful for a person’s mental health, he said.

Beyond these measures, Magen emphasized that it’s also important to seek a mental health professional if you or someone you know is having potential mental health problems, he said.

“If you know somebody who’s depressed and who is suicidal, you absolutely have to get them help,” he said, emphasizing that calling a suicide hotline, bringing the person to a physician or an emergency room is of critical importance.

Overall, Magen said, the complex interactions between environment and genetics have important implications for mental health practitioners and researchers.

“People say, ‘Well it’s really environment’ or ‘It’s biology’ or ‘It’s brain chemicals’ or ‘It’s because I’m having trouble at my job.’ Well, it’s really not. It’s really some combination of those things,” Magen said. “The ultimate moral of the story is you can’t treat anybody unless you take into account both what’s going on with them intra-psychically and with the environment and the biology piece. It’s really tough to treat somebody only with medications.”

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