The Nature-Nurture Paradigm in Mental Health

My own personal view is that most things are one way or another a combination of nature and nurture, and that anything that says something is all one thing is somewhat limiting or inaccurate. For example, I believe that mental health problems are mostly socially and environmentally created, but that people might also just be genetically different, whilst not being genetically defective or inferior. Therefore people with mental health problems are also just different types of people, like the different kinds of eyes or skin colour of human beings.

The nature-nurture paradigm in itself can also be limiting, as there may be other psychological factors related to a persons creative or inner learning development, and which don't fall into strict nature or nurture categories. Where the nature-nurture paradigm becomes complex, is that the terms nature and nurture can have double meanings in theory and in application, and that further meanings need to be taken into account if we are to fairly and accurately decode the terminology. By nature or nurture, there are another two concepts which are extensions of the terms, and another set of terms which also need to be taken into consideration.

Nature and nurture can mean objective things or causes, or it can mean the experiences of individuals. Some times nurture can be used in the first way, in looking at objective causes, but without also taking into account personal or human experiences. This is a misuse of its application in mental health, but one which happens nonetheless. Thus when a mental health professional uses the term nurture, but also uses the added term environmental, what may be being described are the environmental causes, and therefore not the social causes, or vice versa.

Nature can mean that which is genetic, or it can mean human nature, but when nurture is used, it also has two other meanings, both of which mean completely different whilst related things. The term nurture refers to two things, firstly it refers to social conditions or social conditioning, and secondly it refers to the environmental as in family dynamics and upbringing. Curiously it doesn't mean environmental as in the green or ecological sense of the term, nor in the institutional sense, but both of which might have a bearing upon a persons mental health and well-being.

If a professional such as a therapist uses the term environmental, the chances are that environmental means parental-and-child interaction in development and up-bringing, but again this could mean the objective criteria of that without also looking the persons social and life experiences of it.

Also, there are mythological meanings behind what are considered to be simply nature or nurture issues, and the combination of the two factors and the interplay between the two can be ruled out in order to look at only one polarised and mythologised area. However, what is considered as natural may be based upon a social or culture myth, and what may be considered as nurture may be based upon a myth concerning nature. In this way one concept is played off against another in order to make a single polarised claim, whilst in reality both concepts of nature and nurture are still being used theoretically to support the polarised application of one against another.