The association between general childhood psychopathology and adolescent suicide attempt and self-harm: A prospective, population-based twin study.

Abstract

Few quantitative behavior genetic studies have examined why psychopathology is associated with suicide attempt (SA) and self-harm (SH) in adolescence. The present study analyzed data from the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden to examine the extent to which genetic and environmental factors explain SA/SH and its association with psychopathology in childhood, an often-cited risk factor of subsequent SA/SH. When children were 9 or 12 years old (n = 30,444), parents completed the Autism–Tics, AD/HD and other Comorbidities Inventory (Larson et al., 2010) regarding their children’s psychiatric problems as part of an ongoing, longitudinal study. At age 18 years (n = 10,269), adolescents completed self-report questionnaires, including SA/SH assessments. In a bifactor model of childhood psychopathology, a general factor of psychopathology was a statistically significant predictor of adolescent SA/SH at a higher magnitude (β, 0.25, 95% confidence interval [CI; 0.15, 0.34] for suicide attempt), as compared with specific factors of inattention, impulsivity, oppositional behavior, and anxiety/emotion symptoms. Quantitative genetic modeling indicated that the additive genetic influences on the general factor accounted for the association with each outcome (β, 0.24, 95% CI [0.13, 0.34] for suicide attempt). The results remained virtually identical when we fit a higher order factors model. Two additional outcomes demonstrated comparable results. The results extend current literature by revealing the shared genetic overlap between general psychopathology during childhood and adolescent SA/SH.

A Co-Twin Control Study of the Association Between Bullying Victimization and Self-Harm and Suicide Attempt in Adolescence

“…We analyzed the SH/SA items separately and together (either SH or SA), consistent with prior research. 22…”

Genetics of Adolescent Suicide: A Literature review

“…A total of 17 full-text articles fulfilled the selection criteria on the genetics of adolescent suicide, including 7 family and 10 candidate gene association studies [17,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Five of these association studies followed a case-control design [39,43,46,48,51], and one had a combined family and casecontrol design [37].…”

An Epidemiologic and Behavioral Genetic Investigation of the Co-Occurrence of Gambling Disorder and Suicidality in Men and Women

“…The results suggested that "effects of mental disorders on the risk of suicide attempt were exerted almost exclusively through a general psychopathology factor representing the shared effect across all mental disorders" (Hoertel et al, 2015, p. 718). A genetically-informed study among youth suggested that the association between a general psychopathology factor (not including gambling disorder) and suicide attempt was explained by overlapping genetic risk factors (O'Reilly et al, 2020). Taken together, these findings suggest that the genetic association between disordered gambling and suicidality among women is unlikely to be specific to disordered gambling, but rather nonspecific genetic risk factors that increase the general liability for developing a mental disorder.…”