Ebook: Genes, memes, culture, and mental illness: toward an integrative model

Memes are bits of information that are replicated and passed on across individuals and generations. Memes arose when the human brain acquired the capacity to imitate others and supplement the genes as a means of providing information to the developing individual. Memes, unlike genes, have evolved rapidly in the course of human history and form the building blocks of culture. Unlike genes, memes can be stored outside of the organism in the form of written language, recordings, and in the digital form that can be replicated and transmitted without intervening human brain, like computer viruses.;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 -- 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? -- Psychiatric diagnosis: toward a memetic-epigenetic multiaxial model -- Memetic diagnosis, memetic assessment and biopsychosocial epigenetic formulation -- Principles of memetic therapy -- Broad-spectrum memetic therapy -- Specific memetic therapies -- Genetic-memetic prevention -- 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, additions to substances and beliefs, fanaticism) -- Primary memetic syndromes: eating disorders, factitious disorders, malingering, meme-directed destructive behaviors -- Challenges for the future.