Genes marked by stress make grandchildren mentally ill

A little thing called methylation means that parental neglect, or eating a poor diet, could lead to depression or schizophrenia two generations later

What if your bad habits mean that your children and even their children end up with a psychiatric disorder? That is one of the implications of a study in rodents that suggests poor diet and parental neglect can leave their mark on the genes of your children and your children’s children.

A cryptic epigenetic code added to the DNA of mice shows for the first time that changes in gene activity can pass down three generations. It is likely that the same mechanisms are at work in humans.