Behavioral Genetics 101: How Genes Shape Mental Health w/ Professor Kathryn Paige Harden
2/27/20261 hr 7 min
In this episode, I sit down with behavioral geneticist and professor Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden to talk about what behavioral genetics can actually tell us about our kids—and what it can’t. We unpack the reality of psychiatric risk, family history, and the limits of control, and why genes are not destiny. We discuss how thousands of tiny genetic differences shape mental health, why diagnoses are messier than we think, and how warmth and firm boundaries still matter more than any “magic bullet.”
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsKathryn Paige Harden· Guest0:01
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
Aliza Pressman· Host0:07
[ on-hold music] Welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast. I'm Dr. Lisa Pressman, and I had such a cool conversation I'm sharing with you today with Professor Kathryn Page Harden. She's a professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin. She leads the Developmental and Behavioral Genetics Lab. She just wrote another book that blew my mind called Original Sin. It's on the genetics of vice, the problem of blame, and the future of forgiveness. A lot of this conversation is really helping us understand behavioral genetics, and if our children are at risk for developing psychiatric disorders or there are some genetic risks regarding anything that, you know, betw- from addiction to psychopathology. And so, if that's the case, what you can do about it, and all of our kind of difficult conversations about blame, shame, and absolution. I thought it was a very new and interesting way to think about things. I'm excited to share it with you. And remember to go to my Substack, drlisapressman.substack.com, to kind of check in every week and get a little summary of our conversations.