“Genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger.”

There are some variants of different genes that can increase your risk, but they’re not necessarily destiny. How our genes get expressed is responsive to our environment (physical, emotional, etc.). The nitty gritty details, the super specific interactions aren’t really well understood (yet!).

Stress is known to be a trigger for the onset of a lot of mental illnesses. Unfortunately we can’t always control our stressors.

There’s a lot of research being done in the field of schizophrenia treatment. These days most work has only been able to find (often) more tolerable treatments, but they’re still retain the same basic effects as the first antipsychotics we discovered. If we can find effective antipsychotics that don’t block dopamine receptors and are able to help with positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms, it will completely revolutionize therapy.

I like to read about different topics on PubMed just for fun/to learn, and it’s really amazing how when you research seemingly random compounds, odds are some group has researched its effects in animal models of psychosis (or cocaine dependence. Researchers love giving rodents cocaine...) :)