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The relationship between genetic and environmental influences on resilience and on common internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders

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Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Resilience to stressful life events (SLEs), which increase risk of psychopathology, is influenced by genetic factors. The purpose of this paper was to map the overlap of etiologic risk factors for resilience onto the broad psychopathological map. Resilience was defined as the difference between the twins’ total score on a broad measure of internalizing symptoms and their predicted score based on their cumulative exposure to SLEs.

Methods

Cholesky decompositions were performed with OpenMx to quantify the overlap in genetic and environmental risk factors between resilience and four phenotypes [major depression (MD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), alcohol abuse or dependence (AAD), and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)].

Results

The genetic factors that influence resilience account for 42 and 61 % of the heritability of MD and GAD, respectively, and 20 and 18 % for AAD and ASPD, respectively. The latent genetic contribution to MD was shared 47 % with resilience, and for AAD, this estimate was lower (23 %). The shared environmental covariance was nominal.

Conclusions

Genetic influences on resilience contribute to internalizing phenotypes to a higher degree than to externalizing phenotypes. Environmental influences can also have an enduring effect on resilience. However, virtually all of the covariance between resilience and the phenotypes was genetic.

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Notes

  1. These numbers do not sum because all possible pairings for triplet and quadruplet sets were included.

  2. Model III with a qualitative sex effect for resilience fits slightly better than model V that did not have any sex effects (AICs = 3308.75 vs. 3309.84, respectively), but for parsimony, we chose to fit the nested models from the model without any sex effects.

  3. Model XI with a qualitative sex effect for ASPD fits slightly better than model XIII that did not have any sex effects (AICs = 11,860.41 vs. 11,861.13, respectively), but for parsimony, we chose to fit the nested models from the model without any sex effects.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by NIH Grants K02 AA023239 R01 AA020179, P20 AA10782, R37 AA011408, R37 DA18673 and R01 DA22989. The Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry is supported by NIH Grant UL1RR031990.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, 800 E. Leigh Street, PO Box 980126, Richmond, VA, 23298-0126, USA

    Ananda B. Amstadter, Hermine H. Maes, Christina M. Sheerin, John M. Myers & Kenneth S. Kendler

  2. Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Hermine H. Maes & Kenneth S. Kendler

  3. Massey Cancer Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Hermine H. Maes

Authors
  1. Ananda B. Amstadter
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  2. Hermine H. Maes
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  3. Christina M. Sheerin
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  4. John M. Myers
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  5. Kenneth S. Kendler
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Correspondence to Ananda B. Amstadter.

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Amstadter, A.B., Maes, H.H., Sheerin, C.M. et al. The relationship between genetic and environmental influences on resilience and on common internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 51, 669–678 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-015-1163-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-015-1163-6

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