The structure of genetic and environmental risk factors for common psychiatric and substance use disorders in men and women.

Background: Patterns of comorbidity suggest that the common psychiatric and substance use syndromes may be divisible into 2 broad groups of internalizing and externalizing disorders. We do not know how genetic and environmental risk factors contribute to this pattern of comorbidity or whether the etiologic structure of these groups differ in men and women.

Methods: Lifetime diagnoses for 10 psychiatric syndromes were obtained at a personal interview in more than 5600 members of male-male and female-female twin pairs ascertained from a population-based registry.

Life event dimensions of loss, humiliation, entrapment, and danger in the prediction of onsets of major depression and generalized anxiety.

Background: Although substantial evidence suggests that stressful life events predispose to the onset of episodes of depression and anxiety, the essential features of these events that are depressogenic and anxiogenic remain uncertain.

Methods: High contextual threat stressful life events, assessed in 98 592 person-months from 7322 male and female adult twins ascertained from a population-based registry, were blindly rated on the dimensions of humiliation, entrapment, loss, and danger and their categories. Onsets of pure major depression (MD), pure generalized anxiety syndrome (GAS) (defined as generalized anxiety disorder with a 2-week minimum duration), and mixed MD-GAS episodes were examined using logistic regression.

Interpersonal dependence and major depression: aetiological inter-relationship and gender differences.

Background: Although prior research has demonstrated a strong association between interpersonal dependency (IPD) levels and risk for major depression (MD), the possible aetiological explanations of this association as well as any gender differences in the IPD-MD relationship need further clarification.

Method: Population-based twin samples (N = 7174) were interviewed in multiple waves to assess IPD and MD as part of a larger twin study. IPD levels were assessed using the Interpersonal Dependency Inventory while MD diagnoses were derived from the SCID.

Dimensions of religiosity and their relationship to lifetime psychiatric and substance use disorders.

Objective: The role of religion in mental illness remains understudied. Most prior investigations of this relationship have used measures of religiosity that do not reflect its complexity and/or have examined a small number of psychiatric outcomes. This study used data from a general population sample to clarify the dimensions of religiosity and the relationships of these dimensions to risk for lifetime psychiatric and substance use disorders.