Now, in work led by researchers at McGill University, there is evidence that a wide range of early onset psychiatric problems (from depression, anxiety and addictions to dyslexia, bulimia, and ADHD) may be largely due to the combination of just three factors.
These findings have implications for understanding both the causes of a wide range of psychiatric disorders and the features worth targeting in early intervention efforts.
“Until recently, it was thought that psychiatric disorders reflected discrete disease entities, each with their own unique causes,” says Marco Leyton, the senior author on a recent study published in Neuropsychopharmacology and a professor in McGill’s Department of Psychiatry and Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.
“The present research upends this idea, suggesting instead that most early onset disorders largely reflect differential expressions of a small number of biological, psychological and social factors.”.
These brain features were then combined with information about their temperamental traits and histories of early life adversity.
The paper: “A three-factor model of common early onset psychiatric disorders: temperament, adversity, and dopamine” by Maisha Iqbal et al in Neuropsychopharmacology
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A three-factor model of common early onset psychiatric disorders: temperament, adversity, and dopamine
McGill University