Demange Perline A, Boomsma Dorret I, van Bergen Elsje, Nivard Michel G
Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Research Institute LEARN!, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
medRxiv. 2024 Apr 11:2023.01.26.23285029. doi: 10.1101/2023.01.26.23285029.
We investigate the causal relationship between educational attainment (EA) and mental health using two research designs. First, we compare the relationship between EA and 18 psychiatric diagnoses within sibship in Dutch national registry data (N=1.7 million), thereby controlling for unmeasured familial factors. Second, we apply two-sample Mendelian Randomization, which uses genetic variants related to EA or psychiatric diagnosis as instrumental variables, to test whether there is a causal relation in either direction. Our results suggest that lower levels of EA causally increase the risk of MDD, ADHD, alcohol dependence, GAD and PTSD diagnoses. We also find evidence of a causal effect of ADHD on EA. For schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, OCD, and bipolar disorder, results were inconsistent across the different approaches, highlighting the importance of using multiple research designs to understand complex relationships such as between EA and mental health.
我们使用两种研究设计来探究教育程度（EA）与心理健康之间的因果关系。首先，我们在荷兰国家登记数据（N = 170万）中比较同胞关系内EA与18种精神疾病诊断之间的关系，从而控制未测量的家族因素。其次，我们应用两样本孟德尔随机化方法，该方法使用与EA或精神疾病诊断相关的基因变异作为工具变量，以检验两个方向上是否存在因果关系。我们的结果表明，较低的EA水平会因果性地增加患重度抑郁症（MDD）、注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）、酒精依赖、广泛性焦虑障碍（GAD）和创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的风险。我们还发现了ADHD对EA有因果效应的证据。对于精神分裂症、神经性厌食症、强迫症和双相情感障碍，不同方法的结果不一致，这凸显了使用多种研究设计来理解诸如EA与心理健康之间的复杂关系的重要性。
