What Is Mental Illness? An Epigenetic Model -- Genes and Mental Illness -- How Does Stress Work? The Role of Memes in Epigenesis -- Culture and Mental Illness -- Genetic–Memetic Model of Mental Illness – Migration and Natural Disasters as Illustrations -- Evolution and Mental Health: Genes, Memes, Culture, and the Individual -- What Do We Inherit from Our Parents and Ancestors? -- Genes -- Evolution -- Learning, Imitation, and Memes -- Storage and Evolution of Memes in the Brain -- External Storage of Memes: Culture, Media, Cyberspace -- Culture and the Individual -- What Is Mental Health? -- What Is Mental Illness? -- Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment of Mental Illness -- Psychiatric Diagnosis: Toward a Memetic–Epigenetic Multiaxial Model -- Memetic Diagnosis, Memetic Assessment and Biopsychosocial Epigenetic Formulation -- Principles of Memetic Therapy -- Broad-Spectrum Memetic Therapies -- Specific Memetic Therapies -- Genetic–Memetic Prevention -- Specific Psychiatric Syndromes -- Overview of Specific Syndromes -- Attention-Cognition Spectrum Syndromes: Delirium, Dementia, Impulse Control Syndromes, ADHD, Antisocial Personality, Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Traits, Obsessive-Compulsive Syndrome -- Anxiety-Mood Spectrum Syndromes: Anxiety, Panic, Phobias, ASD, PTSD, Borderline Syndrome, Dependent and Avoidant Personalities, Social Phobia, Bipolarity and Mania, Depression – Neurotic and Syndromic, Adjustment Disorders -- Reality Perception Spectrum Syndromes (Imagination, Dissociation, Conversion, Somatoform, Misattribution Somatization, Psychosis) -- Pleasure Spectrum Syndromes (Substance Use/Abuse, Addictions to Substances and Beliefs, Fanaticism) -- Primary Memetic Syndromes: Eating Disorders, Factitious Disorders, Malingering, Meme-Directed Destructive Behaviors -- Challenges for the Future.

Genes, Memes, Culture, and Mental Illness: Toward an Integrative Model Hoyle Leigh What produces mental illness: genes, environment, both, neither? The question has been asked in various forms, and answers debated, for many centuries. According to a groundbreaking new book, the answer can be found in memes—replicable units of information linking genes and environment in the memory and in culture—whose effects on individual brain development can be benign or toxic. The latest work from pioneering psychiatrist Hoyle Leigh, Genes, Memes, Culture, and Mental Illness reconceptualizes mental disorders as products of stressful gene x meme interactions, and introduces a biopsychosocial template for meme-based diagnosis and treatment. A range of therapeutic modalities, both broad-spectrum (e.g., meditation) and specific (e.g., cognitive-behavioral), for countering negative memes and their replication are considered, as are possibilities for memetic prevention strategies. With characteristic depth and accessibility, the author: Outlines the roles of genes and memes in the evolution of the human brain. Elucidates the creation, storage, and evolution of memes within individual brains. Examines culture as a carrier and supplier of memes to the individual. Examines the exchange of memes between the individual and surrounding culture. Proposes mental health as a democracy of memes within individual brains. Provides specific examples of gene x meme interactions that can result in anxiety, depression, and other disorders. Proposes a multiaxial gene x meme model for diagnosing mental illness. Details broad-spectrum and specific meme-oriented treatment strategies. Identifies areas of meme-based prevention for at-risk children. Defines specific syndromes in terms of memetic symptoms, genetic/memetic development, and meme-based treatment. For psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, physicians, medical students, and graduate students interested in culture and mental health and illness, Genes, Memes, Culture, and Mental Illness will enhance their theoretical knowledge and daily practice as well as stimulate new discussion on some of the most enduring issues in their fields.