Slate’s Laura Miller interviews Robert Kolker about his book, Hidden Valley Road, which documents the story of the Galvin Family, where six of 10 children developed schizophrenia:

The genetic part of it has been really disappointing. We really thought 20 years ago that as soon as the human genome was sequenced we were going to knock out any number of complicated diseases. We thought we’d just look at the genes of someone who has a disease, see where the problem genes are, fix those genes and be done in time for dinner. That didn’t happen for any number of diseases, including schizophrenia, where they found one gene and then another and then another and now they have over 100. Each of those irregularities they’ve found only add a small probability that you’ll get the illness.

Schizophrenia–often confused with multiple personality disorder–is a chronic condition that exhausts families, resources, and the lives of the afflicted. Things haven’t changed much, either.

Six Brothers With Schizophrenia Fascinated Researchers. A New Book Explores the Family’s Trauma.