Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study

Psychotic disorders and major depression, both typically adult-onset conditions, often co-occur. At younger ages psychotic experiences and depressive symptoms are often reported in the community. We used a genetically sensitive longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between psychotic ex...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Zavos, Helena M. S., Eley, Thalia C., McGuire, Philip, Plomin, Robert, Cardno, Alastair G., Freeman, Daniel, Ronald, Angelica
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Oxford University Press 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988737/

id	pubmed-4988737
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-49887372016-08-19 Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study Zavos, Helena M. S. Eley, Thalia C. McGuire, Philip Plomin, Robert Cardno, Alastair G. Freeman, Daniel Ronald, Angelica Regular Article Psychotic disorders and major depression, both typically adult-onset conditions, often co-occur. At younger ages psychotic experiences and depressive symptoms are often reported in the community. We used a genetically sensitive longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between psychotic experiences and depressive symptoms in adolescence. A representative community sample of twins from England and Wales was employed. Self-rated depressive symptoms, paranoia, hallucinations, cognitive disorganization, grandiosity, anhedonia, and parent-rated negative symptoms were collected when the twins were age 16 (N = 9618) and again on a representative subsample 9 months later (N = 2873). Direction and aetiology of associations were assessed using genetically informative cross-lagged models. Depressive symptoms were moderately correlated with paranoia, hallucinations, and cognitive disorganization. Lower correlations were observed between depression and anhedonia, and depression and parent-rated negative symptoms. Nonsignificant correlations were observed between depression and grandiosity. Largely the same genetic effects influenced depression and paranoia, depression and hallucinations, and depression and cognitive disorganization. Modest overlap in environmental influences also played a role in the associations. Significant bi-directional longitudinal associations were observed between depression and paranoia. Hallucinations and cognitive disorganization during adolescence were found to impact later depression, even after controlling for earlier levels of depression. Our study shows that psychotic experiences and depression, as traits in the community, have a high genetic overlap in mid-adolescence. Future research should test the prediction stemming from our longitudinal results, namely that reducing or ameliorating positive and cognitive psychotic experiences in adolescence would decrease later depressive symptoms. Oxford University Press 2016-09 2016-03-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4988737/ /pubmed/26994398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbw021 Text en © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Zavos, Helena M. S. Eley, Thalia C. McGuire, Philip Plomin, Robert Cardno, Alastair G. Freeman, Daniel Ronald, Angelica
spellingShingle	Zavos, Helena M. S. Eley, Thalia C. McGuire, Philip Plomin, Robert Cardno, Alastair G. Freeman, Daniel Ronald, Angelica Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study
author_facet	Zavos, Helena M. S. Eley, Thalia C. McGuire, Philip Plomin, Robert Cardno, Alastair G. Freeman, Daniel Ronald, Angelica
author_sort	Zavos, Helena M. S.
title	Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study
title_short	Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study
title_full	Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study
title_fullStr	Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study
title_full_unstemmed	Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study
title_sort	shared etiology of psychotic experiences and depressive symptoms in adolescence: a longitudinal twin study
description	Psychotic disorders and major depression, both typically adult-onset conditions, often co-occur. At younger ages psychotic experiences and depressive symptoms are often reported in the community. We used a genetically sensitive longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between psychotic experiences and depressive symptoms in adolescence. A representative community sample of twins from England and Wales was employed. Self-rated depressive symptoms, paranoia, hallucinations, cognitive disorganization, grandiosity, anhedonia, and parent-rated negative symptoms were collected when the twins were age 16 (N = 9618) and again on a representative subsample 9 months later (N = 2873). Direction and aetiology of associations were assessed using genetically informative cross-lagged models. Depressive symptoms were moderately correlated with paranoia, hallucinations, and cognitive disorganization. Lower correlations were observed between depression and anhedonia, and depression and parent-rated negative symptoms. Nonsignificant correlations were observed between depression and grandiosity. Largely the same genetic effects influenced depression and paranoia, depression and hallucinations, and depression and cognitive disorganization. Modest overlap in environmental influences also played a role in the associations. Significant bi-directional longitudinal associations were observed between depression and paranoia. Hallucinations and cognitive disorganization during adolescence were found to impact later depression, even after controlling for earlier levels of depression. Our study shows that psychotic experiences and depression, as traits in the community, have a high genetic overlap in mid-adolescence. Future research should test the prediction stemming from our longitudinal results, namely that reducing or ameliorating positive and cognitive psychotic experiences in adolescence would decrease later depressive symptoms.
publisher	Oxford University Press
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988737/
_version_	1613629297356963840

Shared Etiology of Psychotic Experiences and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study

Similar Items