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

精神健康问题，如抑郁症和精神病(如精神分裂症)，可能是极度致残的障碍，并导致个人和NHS服务的巨额成本。更好地了解这类疾病的发展和持久性涉及哪些因素，将有助于预防和治疗它们的努力。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，但研究人员一直难以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视了环境因素的作用。因此，我建议调查那些具有遗传风险(无论是阳性家族史还是特定基因变异)，并在童年经历过潜在痛苦经历(被父母严重殴打或与父母分离)的人，是否比只有一种或两种都不存在这些因素的人更有可能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：一项是对同一地理区域的精神病患者和未受影响的个人进行的持续研究；另一项是对抑郁症患者和一般人口对照的完整研究，这些研究提供了关于他们的家族和儿童史的信息，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.