How Do Mental Health Conditions Influence Each Other? New Insights from Family Studies

What you need to know

• Having one mental health condition can directly increase your risk of developing another
• This effect appears similar for both men and women
• Understanding these connections could lead to better prevention and treatment strategies

The Challenge of Multiple Mental Health Conditions

If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with a mental health condition, you may have noticed that additional mental health challenges often follow. This common occurrence - known as comorbidity in medical terms - raises an important question: Does having one mental health condition actually cause an increased risk for developing others? Or is there something else explaining why these conditions tend to occur together?

A Novel Research Approach

To tackle this question, researchers examined health records of over 900,000 people born in Sweden between 1980 and 1990. They looked at six conditions: major depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol use disorder, drug use disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

What made this study unique was its use of family genetic risk scores - a measure that looks at how common these conditions are in a person’s extended family. This gives researchers a way to estimate someone’s genetic risk for developing each condition.

The Key Finding

The study found that when someone develops a mental health condition, the influence of their genetic risk for getting a second condition becomes weaker. This suggests that having the first condition directly increases the risk of developing the second - above and beyond any genetic predisposition.

Real-World Examples

Take depression and anxiety as an example. We know these conditions often occur together. This research suggests that developing depression may directly increase someone’s risk of later developing anxiety, regardless of their genetic risk for anxiety. The same appears true in reverse - having anxiety may directly increase the risk of developing depression.

Similarly, the study found evidence that having depression or anxiety might directly increase someone’s risk of developing alcohol use problems, possibly because some people use alcohol to try to cope with their symptoms (often called “self-medication”).

What This Means for You

These findings have several important implications:

• If you have one mental health condition, being aware of the increased risk for developing others can help you stay alert to early warning signs
• Early treatment of initial mental health challenges might help prevent additional conditions from developing
• The connection between conditions suggests that comprehensive treatment approaches addressing multiple aspects of mental health may be most effective

Conclusions

• Mental health conditions can directly influence the development of other conditions
• This effect appears consistent across different types of conditions and affects both men and women similarly
• Understanding these connections may help develop better prevention and treatment strategies