Effects of the interaction between genetic factors and maltreatment on child and adolescent psychiatric disorders

SynopsisAll major psychiatric disorders aggregate in families. For most disorders, both genes and environmental factors play an important role in this aggregation. While recent work has tended to concentrate on the importance of genetic factors, this report focuses on the potential importance of environmental risk factors which themselves aggregate in families. In particular, this article examines how much of the familial aggregation of a psychiatric disorder may result from the familial aggregation of a risk factor. The model is illustrated and then applied to putative familial risk factors for schizophrenia and depression. The results of the model suggest that if parental loss and exposure to pathogenic rearing practices are true risk factors for depression, then they could account for a significant proportion of the familial aggregation of depression. By contrast, the model predicts that even if obstetric injury and low social class are true risk factors for schizophrenia, they together would account for only a very small proportion of the tendency for schizophrenia to aggregate in families.

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Understanding risk and resilience in maltreated children

Genes, brain, and emotions ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198793014.003.0021 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 304-323

Author(s):

Joan Kaufman ◽

Janitza L Montalvo-Ortiz ◽

Richard S Lee

Keyword(s):

Child Abuse ◽

Psychiatric Disorders ◽

Neural Plasticity ◽

Genetic Factors ◽

Strong Predictor ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Risk And Resilience ◽

Poor Treatment ◽

History Of

Individuals with a history of child abuse are at high risk for a broad range of psychiatric and substance use disorders. This chapter reviews key findings from research on the genetics of child abuse-related psychiatric disorders, neuroimaging investigations with maltreated youth, and resiliency studies. Relevant empirical work in the field was reviewed, with an emphasis on prior reviews, meta-analytic studies, and recent publications. Genetic factors are not associated with distinct psychiatric disorders but rather diverse clinical phenotypes, and a history of abuse is frequently associated with alterations in structural and functional brain changes across multiple brain regions and circuits that mediate a wide variety of emotional and cognitive processes. Heterogeneity in clinical outcome and brain measures varies as a function of a wide range of factors, and emerging findings on genetic and neural plasticity offers significant promise in understanding risk and resilience in maltreated youth. Child maltreatment is a strong predictor of early onset of psychiatric illness, increased comorbidity, and poor treatment response; however, a history of abuse need not lead to the development of psychiatric problems. Risk is altered by genetic factors, and can be ameliorated by positive factors in the environment—including the availability of positive support, enrichment experiences, and the delivery of evidence-based psychotherapeutic clinical interventions. Future multidisciplinary and translational studies will help to further delineate the mechanisms by which experiences of maltreatment confers risk for psychopathology, as well as help to further delineate factors associated with resiliency.

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Sleep-Related Movement Disorders

Management of Sleep Disorders in Psychiatry ◽

10.1093/med/9780190929671.003.0014 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 193-214

Author(s):

Ravi Gupta

Keyword(s):

Movement Disorder ◽

Psychiatric Disorders ◽

Iron Metabolism ◽

Restless Legs Syndrome ◽

Movement Disorders ◽

Genetic Factors ◽

Psychotropic Medications ◽

Predisposing Factors ◽

Treatable Condition

Sleep-related movement disorders include disorders that manifest as simple and mostly stereotyped movements occurring at sleep–wake interface or during sleep. Restless legs syndrome (RLS), the most common sleep-related movement disorder. RLS is a treatable condition that psychiatrists must be familiar with due to its common comorbidity with a broad range of psychiatric disorders. In addition, commonly used psychotropic medications are known to induce or worsen RLS symptoms in predisposed individuals, and these symptoms may be mistaken for akathisia or sleep-initiation insomnia and lead to mismanagement. This chapter discusses, among other RLS-related topics, the diagnosis, epidemiology, predisposing factors, genetic factors, and the role of iron metabolism.

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Electrophysiological network alterations in adults with copy number variants associated with high neurodevelopmental risk

Translational Psychiatry ◽

10.1038/s41398-020-00998-w ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Diana C. Dima ◽

Rachael Adams ◽

Stefanie C. Linden ◽

Alister Baird ◽

Jacqueline Smith ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Psychiatric Disorders ◽

Copy Number ◽

Genetic Factors ◽

Copy Number Variants ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Common Mechanism ◽

Node Centrality ◽

Neural Integration ◽

Increased Risk ◽

Theory Framework

Abstract Rare copy number variants associated with increased risk for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders (referred to as ND-CNVs) are characterized by heterogeneous phenotypes thought to share a considerable degree of overlap. Altered neural integration has often been linked to psychopathology and is a candidate marker for potential convergent mechanisms through which ND-CNVs modify risk; however, the rarity of ND-CNVs means that few studies have assessed their neural correlates. Here, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate resting-state oscillatory connectivity in a cohort of 42 adults with ND-CNVs, including deletions or duplications at 22q11.2, 15q11.2, 15q13.3, 16p11.2, 17q12, 1q21.1, 3q29, and 2p16.3, and 42 controls. We observed decreased connectivity between occipital, temporal, and parietal areas in participants with ND-CNVs. This pattern was common across genotypes and not exclusively characteristic of 22q11.2 deletions, which were present in a third of our cohort. Furthermore, a data-driven graph theory framework enabled us to successfully distinguish participants with ND-CNVs from unaffected controls using differences in node centrality and network segregation. Together, our results point to alterations in electrophysiological connectivity as a putative common mechanism through which genetic factors confer increased risk for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.

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Classifications in child and adolescent psychiatry: A risky business?

European Psychiatry ◽

10.1017/s0924933800284502 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 41 (S1) ◽

pp. 911-912

Author(s):

Falissard B.

Keyword(s):

Clinical Practice ◽

Psychiatric Disorders ◽

Adolescent Psychiatry ◽

Child And Adolescent ◽

Child And Adolescent Psychiatry ◽

The Self ◽

The Media ◽

Competing Interest ◽

Risky Business ◽

Art Critics

Psychiatrists, like most physicians, are fascinated by their classifications. Like art critics that distinguish surrealists, cubists, hyperrealists, minimalists, etc. psychiatrists try to reveal patterns of symptoms, emotions or behaviors from the patients they see in their day-to-day practice. But psychiatric disorders are not used and determined only by psychiatrists. As pointed by P. Zachar (2015), psychiatric disorders can be considered as biological dysfunction, patterns of symptoms helpful for treatment and prognosis, categories used by health insurances, categories used by judges, words used in the media, concepts used by sociologists (“The weariness of the self”, Alain Eherenberg).We will discuss in the conference what science can say about this confusion and what clinicians should consider for their clinical practice.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.

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