kinda a fear of mine.

my husband has a brother who has some kind of mental disability. low IQ, slow in general, nothing blatantly obvious. he's independant, he's easy to get along with, and he's all around good people.

occasionally i wondered if this could be some kind of hereditary issue, but since he was never diagnosed with anything, i never gave it that much thought.

then yesterday i went over my sister in law's house. she said that one of husband's neices (the daughter of a DIFFERENT brother, not the one i mentioned above) had a son, and at age 12, he's been entered into a mental institution. the mom says that he tried to burn down the house by putting a towel over a lamp or something. i think there were some other violent tendencies before that. she claims that he "inherited" something that the brother (his uncle) has.

this kinda scares me. i don't even know what i want to ask here... i'm wondering if the two things could be connected (personnally, i don't think they are... but what do i know). does anyone else have any family members who have some kind of mental disabilites-- did you test for anything? other than ds?