Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:657-665
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Indirect vertical cultural transmission: a model for nongenetic parental influences on the liability to psychiatric illness
KS Kendler
Department of Psychiatry, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.
A long tradition in psychiatry has focused on parental traits that directly
influence the liability to psychiatric disorders in offspring. Because
these traits rarely resemble the disorders they cause, traditional models
of cultural transmission (which assume that "like perpetuates like") may
not be appropriate. The author develops and illustrates several models for
indirect vertical cultural transmission of psychiatric illness. These
models generate falsifiable predictions about the pattern of risk in
relatives of affected individuals. For example, all such models predict a
substantially higher risk of illness in siblings than in offspring of
affected individuals. It is now possible to develop and test rigorous
models for the cultural transmission of psychiatric illness.
