Many people enter genetic counselling to find out whether they will pass an illness to their children or to understand the causes of their condition.
When the bottom fell out for Rina Varley, she was unable to work, and didn’t even have a name for her illness.
“I had been working in newspapers, selling print ads for quite a while, and then I had a bit of breakdown,” she said. “I was depressed. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t even get out of bed.”
Although Varley had been seeing therapists for nearly half her life, she had never received a definitive diagnosis.
“They didn’t seem to think it was important to put a name to it, that it wouldn’t be helpful to have a label,” she recalled. “If I had cancer, they would give it a name. But with a mental illness, there’s a stigma and people get weird and judgey.”
She felt lost, betrayed by her mind, and with no real focus for her energy.
“Finally, in 2012, I received a diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I had a label, but I knew nothing beyond that,” she said.
Varley started to work on a one-woman play about her struggle under the tutelage of actor and activist Victoria Maxwell, the self-appointed Bi-Polar Princess.
“She mentored me writing my script, and she recommended genetic counselling,” she said.
Many people enter genetic counselling to find out whether they will pass an illness to their children, or to understand the causes of their condition.
“For me, it was purely curiosity about whether there was some trauma in my past that brought this on,” she said. “Did I do something wrong? Well, no. It’s a combination of environmental factors and genetics.”
With a name for her illness and an understanding of its causes, Varley was relieved of a lifetime of shame.
“Now I know there is a community of people who battle negative thoughts and destructive beliefs all day, every day — that I’m not just a drama queen,” she said.
Genetic counselling is often misunderstood as a way to select genetically superior offspring, according to Jehannine Austin, professor of psychiatry and medical genetics at the University of British Columbia.
In the absence of good scientific explanations for their illness, many people become convinced they have done something to bring it on themselves.
The process was originally used to counsel parents of children born with genetic disorders — such as Down Syndrome — and for people dealing with adult-onset diseases such as Huntington’s disease.
“Huntington’s is one of those diseases that is entirely genetic. If you have the gene, you will get the disease,” said Austin, who founded the world’s first genetic counselling clinic. “Psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety are quite different — they are not entirely genetic in origin.”
In the absence of good scientific explanations for their illness, many people become convinced they have done something to bring it on themselves.
“I regularly speak to people who are convinced it’s their fault that they have schizophrenia because they smoked a lot of pot when they were younger,” said Austin. “They feel that they must have triggered it somehow.”
Credit: Vancouver Sun
