For the first time, researchers have found that the environment you’re raised in is as important as your genes in determining risk for major depression.
In a large retrospective study, researchers looked at depression diagnoses among more than 2.2 million people in Sweden and their parents and found that genetic factors and household environment contributed equally to odds that the illness would be “transmitted” from parents to offspring.
The results – based on comparing adopted and biological offspring from both intact and broken families – contradict many previous findings from twin studies that suggested genetic predisposition plays the larger role in the inheritance of depression, the authors write in JAMA Psychiatry.
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Using data collected from January 1960 through December 2016, Kendler and his colleagues analyzed newly available Swedish primary care registries, combined with hospital and psychiatric outpatient records to trace treated major depressive disorder in parents and offspring. They examined five types of families with various combinations of biological or adoptive offspring, intact households, and those with an absent father, a stepfather or both.
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The new data indicating that genes are not destiny have a range of implications for research, treatment and child-rearing, experts said.
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“This study provides strong evidence to support public policy for covering mental health treatment that includes a combination of drugs and therapy,” [said psychiatry professor Robert Klitzman]
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