What, what-- how did those three come together?

Well, I hope it's not too long a story, but I was an undergraduate student at University of Michigan, and one of the ways to earn credits was to volunteer in some local institution of one type or another.

And Ypsilanti State Hospital was one of the choices.

Well, I'd never seen or been in a mental institution, a mental hospital to know what that was even gonna be like, but this was among the worst of the worst.

It was the kind of place where before you walked into a dark room, you would reach around the wall to flip the light switch so that all the cockroaches could run away.

It was just a terrible place of warehousing and dehumanizing people.

And I-- it made me angry, and I thought I could real- I can do better than this.

Right.

Continue, please.

Isn't a gene for depression.

There are genes that make you vulnerable to depression, and the difference is we've moved away from genetics in this field into the domain of what's called epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of how environmental conditions shape genetic expression, and so family environment is an epigenetic force.

Psychotherapy is an epigenetic force.

COVID was an epigenetic force.

Environmental conditions that shape genetic expression.

What would you say to them?