Nature, Nurture, and Freewill

 Sydney Bell 

February 26 

HST 401 

I am going to be honest. I haven’t put much of any thought into my mental health throughout my life. Maybe it’s how I was raised, maybe I’m just less prone to mental illness due to genetics, I really don’t know. Likewise, my family and friends haven’t been through any major mental health issues/illnesses(but even if they were I wouldn’t be prone to just publishing it online without having a lengthy conversation with them first, out of respect). But now that I’m thinking about it, maybe there are certain aspects of life that make you more or less prone to having a mental illness, and maybe if these aspects were more understood more progress could be made in terms of treating mental health.   

Elyn Saks, a law professor and psychoanalyst, recounts her personal life experience in an interview with science journalist, John Horgan. In this interview she discusses how life feels as a person who deals with schizophrenia. She explains certain situations she has had to overcome because of her mental illness. One of them at Yale law school where she remembers babbling incoherently to classmates. Elyn doesn’t fully discuss why she thinks she has schizophrenia but she did make the claim that some part of it may be genetic. 

The National Library of Medicine published a text discussing the genetics of schizophrenia from the perspective of healthcare and treatment. They also state that, “inherited factors account for the major proportion of its etiology. The high heritability has motivated gene mapping studies that have improved in sophistication through the past two decades.”. This is interesting because I would have thought that the nurture side of this mental disorder would be much more influential in terms of who has the mental disorder or not but it seems that genetics play a very important role in this mental illness. It was also discussed that gene mapping could improve the diagnosis part of mental illness by targeting multiple disorders, instead of just classifying one.  

There is compelling evidence that nature(genetics) plays a significant role in mental illness but I believe that nurture plays a significant role as well. Nurture can be defined as your upbringing by your caregivers, the environmental factors you had to deal with growing up such as: where you grew up, the culture you were born into, languages etc. The Kentucky Counseling Center insists that nurture does play an important role in mental health suggesting that, “For instance, a person may develop substance abuse to cope with painful experiences, or depression due to an accumulation of life stressors”.   

However, there is another aspect of mental health that I think may go along with nature and nurture as well. That aspect is freewill. What if you could get rid of or even just lessen the pain of mental illness by simply willing it hard enough. No medication or therapy, just your mind. Like a placebo effect of sorts. Placebos have been used in clinical trials and have been proved to have an effect on symptoms so maybe the mind works in a similar way.

 

Also I would like to preface that it is not my intention to down play or gloss-over mental illnesses that people have and state that you can just solve it on your own. Though I have no personal experience with it, I understand how hard it must be to have something like effect your life so much and yet still be so misunderstood. I am just wondering, If the mind is where the problem stemmed from, maybe the mind alone is also the solution. Not a lot of research exists on the topic. 

Overall, I think that nature and nurture play an important role in mental illness, which diseases come and for how long. I also believe that when mental health becomes more understood, more progress can and will be made in the world of mental health care. Lastly, I want to mention a quote from Elyn herself, she stated that, “We fear what we don’t understand, and schizophrenia remains profoundly mysterious.”. Once society gets over the stigma of mental illness and becomes less afraid of it, when we try to truly understand it and devote more time and effort into treatment, then more progress can be made and the lives of those dealing with it will be improved.      

“I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System.” 

Works Cited 

“The Freudian Lawyer: The Meaning of Madness: Chapter Five.” John Horgan (The Science Writer), johnhorgan.org/books/mind-body-problems/chapter-five. Accessed 26 Feb. 2026. 

Kukshal, Prachi, et al. “Genetics of Schizophrenia from a Clinicial Perspective.” International Review of Psychiatry (Abingdon, England), U.S. National Library of Medicine, Oct. 2012, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5445022/#S12. 

Kentucky Counseling Center. “Is Mental Health Shaped by Nature or Nurture? A Deep Dive into the Debate.” Kentucky Counseling Center, 9 Apr. 2025, kentuckycounselingcenter.com/nature-vs-nurture-in-mental-health/.  

*I had some trouble writing this essay, so sorry if its not lengthy or choppy at times, I just didn’t want to add fluff to the piece. I just don’t feel like I have a ton to speak on in terms of mental health.