Does mental illness have a tendency to run in families? It's just I suffer Depression periodically and my dad has a lot of anger and mental health issues. His sister/my aunty is also Schizophrenic and has been sectioned. It just freaks me out in case I develop a worse mental illness than Depression. Also, someone mentioned that they were interested in how other cultures view mental illness. I have just finished reading a book called Mummy Doesn't Love You by Alexander Sinclair. It's about how his own mother tried to destroy his life and mind and how he had to convince everyone that his mum was lying about him having a mental illness. In the book he is taken to Greece on a family holiday as his mum was Greek and was incarcerated in a mental 'hospital' and forgotten. At the time (1970's) mental illness was viewed as a curse and many Greeks feared it. I can't really describe the book other than it is horrifying but I would recommend reading it. I'm not sure whether mental illness is still stigmatised in Greek culture today. I can imagine today in some countries it would still carry a social stigma and will be feared. It's horrible to think that in some countries (Eastern European springs to mind for some reason) institutions may still exist where people with mental illness are treated as sub-humans and all but forgotten.