Interaction between genetic risk and childhood adversity in the development of psychosis and depression.

抑郁症和精神病（如精神分裂症）等心理健康问题可能是极其致残的疾病，并给个人和国民保健服务带来巨大成本。更深入地了解这些疾病的发展和持续存在的因素将有助于预防和治疗这些疾病。人们认为导致这些疾病的主要因素之一是个体的基因构成，但研究人员一直在努力确定参与这一过程的确切基因，可能是因为他们在很大程度上忽略了环境因素的作用。因此，我建议调查是否有遗传风险（阳性家族史或特定的遗传变异）的个体在童年时期暴露于潜在的痛苦经历（被父母严重殴打或与父母分离）比只有一种或两种因素都没有的个体更容易被诊断为抑郁症和精神病。为了验证这一命题，我将分析两项不同的横断面病例对照研究的数据：一项正在进行的精神病患者和来自同一地理区域的未受影响个体的研究；以及一项对抑郁症患者和一般人群控制的完整研究，该研究提供了他们的家庭和童年历史的信息，并提供了DNA样本。

Mental health problems such as depression and psychosis (e.g., schizophrenia) can be extremely disabling disorders and result in a massive cost for both the individual and NHS services. Greater understanding of what factors are involved in development and persistence of such disorders would assist attempts to prevent and treat them. One of the major factors thought to cause these disorders is an individual‘s genetic make-up but researchers have struggled to identify the exact genes involved in this process possibly because they have largely ignored the role of environmental factors. Therefore, I propose to investigate whether individuals who have a genetic risk (either positive family history or specific genetic variant) and have been exposed to potentially distressing experiences in childhood (severely beaten by or separated from their parents) are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and psychosis than individuals with only one or neither of these factors. To test this proposition I will analyse data from two different cross-sectional case-control studies: an ongoing study of psychosis patients and unaffected individuals from the same geographical area; and a completed study of depressed patients and general population controls that have provided information about their family and childhood history and given DNA samples.