ABSTRACT
Many researchers studying the psychoses believe that the field is currently undergoing a paradigm shift. Long-held assumptions about the nature and origins of conditions such as ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘bipolar disorder’ are being questioned and new research strategies are being employed to examine old questions in new ways. One assumption that is long overdue for re-examination is the idea that severe psychiatric disorders are hardly at all influenced by the physical and psychological environment, for example, by where one is born, how one is raised or whether or not one has the misfortune to experience various kinds of adverse events.
