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Background: Suicide is a major cause of death among youth. Childhood trauma (CT) has emerged as a leading environmental risk factor for suicidal ideation (SI). The present study intends to understand the association between CT and SI in a sample of twins, highlighting the relevance of CT per se, regardless of genetic vulnerability., Methods: Data were derived from a general population young twin study, the TwinssCan project (N = 796; mean age = 17.4). Different types of CT (physical, emotional and sexual) were explored with CTQ and SI through SCL-90-R. The discordance within twin-pairs was used to dissect the genetic and CT effects in SI., Results: Total CT and all subdomains were associated with an increased risk for SI. The within-pair differences analysis in monozygotic and dizygotic twins suggested that part of this association is not attributable to genetic predisposition, which points out the relevance of CT itself upon the increase of SI. This result converged with CT subdomain analyses of physical abuse and neglect., Limitations: While within-pair twin analyses control for genetic risk, additional environmental shared and individual characteristics should be controlled for (such as poverty or protective factors). More detailed information on SI would be of great interest to better capture the complexity of this construct., Conclusion: CT appears to be an important environmental risk factor for SI and at least partly independent of Gene-Environment correlation (rGE). This study highlights the importance of including the history of CT in psychiatric evaluations of patients. The burden of the psychosocial environment on SI could be disentangled by further research on environmental risk and protective factors., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Background: Previous studies assessing the hypothesis that the construct of 'aberrant salience' is associated with psychosis and psychotic symptoms showed conflicting results. For this reason, the association between measures to index aberrant salience and subclinical psychotic symptoms in a general population sample was analysed. In addition, genetic vulnerability was added to the analysis as a modifier to test the hypothesis that modification by genetic vulnerability may explain variability in the results., Methods: The TwinssCan project obtained data from general population twins (N = 887). CAPE (Community Assessment of Psychic Experience) scores were used to index psychotic experiences. Aberrant salience was assessed with white noise task and ambiguous situations task., Results: Measures of aberrant salience were not associated with psychotic experiences, nor was there evidence for an interaction with genetic predisposition in this association (Z = 1.08, p = 0.282)., Conclusions: Various studies including the present could not replicate the association between aberrant salience and psychotic experiences in general population samples. The conflicting findings might be explained by moderation by genetic vulnerability, but results are inconsistent. If there was evidence for a main effect or interaction, this was in the positive symptom scale only. On the other hand, the association was more robust in so-called 'ultra-high risk' patients and first episode psychosis patients. Thus, this association may represent a state-dependent association, present only at the more severe end of the psychosis spectrum., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Purpose: To explore gender differences of the associations between childhood adversity (CA) subtypes and psychiatric symptoms in the general population., Methods: Data of 791 participants were retrieved from a general population twin cohort. The Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL-90) and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire were used to assess overall psychopathology with nine symptom domains scores and total CA with exposure to five CA subtypes, respectively. The associations between CA and psychopathology were analyzed in men and women separately and were subsequently compared., Results: Total CA was associated with total SCL-90 and all symptom domains without significant gender differences. However, the analyses of CA subtypes showed that the association between emotional abuse and total SCL-90 was stronger in women compared to men [χ 2 (1) = 4.10, P = 0.043]. Sexual abuse was significantly associated with total SCL-90 in women, but emotional neglect and physical neglect were associated with total SCL-90 in men. Exploratory analyses of CA subtypes and SCL-90 subdomains confirmed the pattern of gender-specific associations. In women, emotional abuse was associated with all symptom domains, and sexual abuse was associated with all except phobic anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity. In men, emotional neglect was associated with depression, and physical neglect was associated with phobic anxiety, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid ideation, and hostility subdomains., Conclusion: CA is a trans-syndromal risk factor regardless of gender. However, differential associations between CA subtypes and symptom manifestation might exist. Abuse might be particularly associated with psychopathology in women, whereas neglect might be associated with psychopathology in men., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The present study examines whether neuroticism is predicted by genetic vulnerability, summarized as polygenic risk score for neuroticism (PRS N ), in interaction with bullying, parental bonding, and childhood adversity. Data were derived from a general population adolescent and young adult twin cohort. The final sample consisted of 202 monozygotic and 436 dizygotic twins and 319 twin pairs. The Short Eysenck Personality questionnaire was used to measure neuroticism. PRS N was trained on the results from the Genetics of Personality Consortium (GPC) and United Kingdom Biobank (UKB) cohorts, yielding two different PRS N . Multilevel mixed-effects models were used to analyze the main and interacting associations of PRS N , childhood adversity, bullying, and parental bonding style with neuroticism. We found no evidence of gene-environment correlation. PRS N thresholds of .005 and .2 were chosen, based on GPC and UKB datasets, respectively. After correction for confounders, all the individual variables were associated with the expression of neuroticism: both PRS N from GPC and UKB, childhood adversity, maternal bonding, paternal bonding, and bullying in primary school and secondary school. However, the results indicated no evidence for gene-environment interaction in this cohort. These results suggest that genetic vulnerability on the one hand and negative life events (childhood adversity and bullying) and positive life events (optimal parental bonding) on the other represent noninteracting pathways to neuroticism., Competing Interests: The authors have no relevant financial or nonfinancial interests to disclose., (© The Author(s) 2023.)