Marcus Munafo explores a recent study that uses genetic data and family environmental information to quantify the risk of chronic pain and the contribution of risk variants for major depressive disorder.
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This World Mental Health Day, we share a Wellcome Trust interview with Professor Andrew McIntosh, who has a £4.7 million award to explore why people develop depression. He tells Wellcome how he hopes his work will improve the lives of people with mental health conditions, and how he looks after his own mental wellbeing.
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Samei Huda reviews a recent study of schizophrenia and subsequent urban deprivation, which revisits the social drift hypothesis.
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Marcus Munafo considers the implications of a recent Swedish population study, which explores patterns of non-random mating within and across 11 major psychiatric disorders.
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Mandy Johnstone writes her debut Mental Elf blog on a recent Nature study, which identifies a set of genetic variations that are strongly associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia.
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David Steele considers the implications of a Swedish population registry study, which finds that people with eating disorders and their close relations are at increased risk for attempting and/or completing suicide.
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Marcus Munafò looks at the mounting evidence about smoking and risk of schizophrenia, including a new case-control study that provides clear evidence of a prospective association between cigarette smoking and a subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia.
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Genome-wide association studies have proved extremely successful in identifying reliable genetic associations with a number of disease outcomes, but until now studies of psychiatric outcomes have lagged behind. This latest schizophrenia study is therefore an important advance.
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Linking brain scans with genetic information offers a powerful way to further our understanding of how the brain works, but to do this properly many researchers from around the world need to collaborate. Fortunately, the ENIGMA Consortium are leading the way in this emerging field of imaging genomics.
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With the background of 11% of total United States government spending for disability support in 2006, the authors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School highlight the financial and social imperatives to improve services for people with learning disabilities. They remind us that most of the current focus on research has been on environmental [read the full story…]
