Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam University Medical Centres, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2021 Jul;60(7):808-810. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2021.02.017. Epub 2021 Mar 4.
One of the greatest challenges in the social, behavioral, and medical sciences is to determine the causality underlying associations between risk factors and behavioral or disease outcomes. An area in which insight into causality, and especially direction of causation of possible risk factors and outcomes, could have enormous (clinical) impact is the field of childhood and adolescent psychiatry. Abundant evidence shows that psychopathology runs in families, but the pathways underlying shared family risk are unclear. Large twin family studies provide robust estimates for the heritability of childhood and adolescent behavioral and emotional problems, but direct non-genetic effects from parent to offspring or vice versa cannot be excluded. Question remains as to whether there is a direct causal effect of parental mental health status on the mental health and well-being of their offspring above and beyond the transmission of genetic susceptibility. Genetically informed methods provide opportunities to tackle this causality challenge..
在社会、行为和医学科学领域，最大的挑战之一是确定风险因素与行为或疾病结果之间关联的因果关系。在因果关系方面有深入了解，特别是可能的风险因素和结果的因果关系方向，可能会产生巨大（临床）影响的一个领域是儿童和青少年精神病学领域。大量证据表明，精神病理学在家庭中存在，但共享家庭风险的途径尚不清楚。大型双胞胎家庭研究为儿童和青少年行为和情绪问题的遗传性提供了可靠的估计，但不能排除父母对子女或反之亦然的直接非遗传效应。问题仍然是，父母的心理健康状况对子女的心理健康和幸福感是否存在直接的因果影响，而不仅仅是遗传易感性的传递。遗传信息方法为解决这一因果关系挑战提供了机会。
