The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study: online recruitment into the largest recontactable study of depression and anxiety

Abstract

Background: Anxiety and depression are common, debilitating and costly. These disorders are influenced by multiple risk factors, from genes to psychological vulnerabilities and environmental stressors but research is hampered by a lack of sufficiently large comprehensive studies. We are recruiting 40,000 individuals with lifetime depression or anxiety, with broad assessment of risks to facilitate future research. Methods: The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study (www.gladstudy.org.uk) recruits individuals with depression or anxiety into the NIHR Mental Health BioResource. Participants invited to join the study (via media campaigns) provide demographic, environmental and genetic data, and consent for medical record linkage and recontact. Results: Online recruitment was effective; 41,892 consented and 26,877 participants completed the questionnaire by July 2019. Participants' questionnaire data identified very high rates recurrent depression, severe anxiety and comorbidity. Participants reported high rates of treatment receipt. The age profile of sample is biased toward young adults, with higher recruitment of females and the better educated, especially at younger ages. Discussion: This paper describes the study methodology and descriptive data for GLAD, which represents a large, recontactable resource that will enable future research into risks, outcomes and treatment for anxiety and depression.

The Validity of Brief Phenotyping in Population Biobanks for Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Studies on the Biobank Scale

“…The successful use of biobanks in genetic studies has partly inspired the development of large, targeted cohorts for psychiatric genetics, some using the recruitment power of social media. Examples of this include the Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative, the Australian Sample of Depression, and the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) study [4][5][6]. However, several aspects of these large-scale efforts present challenges when using the data available to capture psychiatric phenotypes.…”

“…An example of this can be seen in the GLAD study. The primary purpose of the GLAD study was to establish a recontactable research resource for studying MDD, anxiety disorders, and related phenotypes, including PTSD [4]. Sample recruitment was primarily driven by online advertising through social media, overcoming some of the access issues that created biases in the UK Biobank (although this recruitment strategy creates its own ascertainment biases as well).…”

Comparison of algorithm-based versus single-item diagnostic measures of anxiety and depression disorders in the GLAD and COPING cohorts

“…The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study (https://gladstudy.org.uk) is an online research platform to recruit individuals with a lifetime experience of depression and/or anxiety for future research. The design and implementation of this study are described elsewhere (11). Recruitment is ongoing and this paper includes data from all participants that completed the survey as of May 19th, 2020 (N = 37,419).…”

“…The analyses presented in this paper include data from all participants that completed the GLAD or COPING survey before December 10th, 2020. Additional details of the design and implementation of the GLAD Study are described elsewhere (14).…”

Nick Martin and the Genetics of Depression: Sample Size, Sample Size, Sample Size

“…The resulting data are rich, and the first publications (Byrne et al, 2019) are starting to come out. The UK GLAD (Genetics Links to Anxiety and Depression) study was modeled on AGDS and recruited 40,000 cases of anxiety/depression (Davies et al, 2019), providing useful reciprocal replication data.…”