Genes, Memes, Culture, and Mental Illness

Hoyle Leigh, M.D. is currently Professor of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco, and Director of the Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Program at Fresno Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California. He is the author of many professional books and journal articles, including the textbooks, Handbook of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, with Jon Streltzer, M.D., and The Patient: Biological, Psychological, and Social Dimensions of Medical Practice, 3rd Edition, with Morton F. Reiser, M.D. and Biopsychosocial Approaches in Primary Care. Prior to joining the faculty at UCSF, Dr. Leigh was Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, where he founded the pioneering Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic with Gary Schwartz, Ph.D., as well as directing the basic behavioral science course and the Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Service at Yale New Haven Hospital. Dr. Leigh received his M.D. degree summa cum laude from Yonsei University School of Medicine in Korea, and completed residency training in psychiatry at University of Kansas Medical Center and the Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

• 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.