The role of genetic and environmental factors in covariation between anxiety and anger in childhood

Higher levels of anger expression, as well as lower levels of anger control, have been reported for adults with anxiety disorders compared to individuals without anxiety disorders. Different to the research on adults, very few studies examined the relationship between anxiety and anger in childhood....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	European child & adolescent psychiatry Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 607 - 617
Main Authors:	Scaini, Simona, Centorame, Giulio, Lissandrello, Francesca, Sardella, Stella, Stazi, Maria Antonietta, Fagnani, Corrado, Brombin, Chiara, Battaglia, Marco
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-04-2021 Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:	Adolescent Anger Anger - physiology Anxiety Anxiety - genetics Anxiety - psychology Anxiety disorders Child Child & adolescent psychiatry Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Childhood Children Comorbidity Diseases in Twins - genetics Emotions Environmental aspects Environmental Exposure - adverse effects Environmental factors Female Heritability Humans Male Medicine Medicine & Public Health Original Contribution Phenotypes Psychiatry Twin studies Twins, Dizygotic - genetics Anger Anxiety Twin study Childhood
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Summary:	Higher levels of anger expression, as well as lower levels of anger control, have been reported for adults with anxiety disorders compared to individuals without anxiety disorders. Different to the research on adults, very few studies examined the relationship between anxiety and anger in childhood. In our study, we investigated 398 Italian twin pairs (74 MZ male, 70 MZ female, 134 same-sex dizygotic-53 male, 81 female-, and 120 unlike-sex dizygotic twin pairs), aged 8–17 (mean 13.06 ± 2.59): (i) the heritability of a childhood anger phenotype; (ii) the association between five anxiety domains and anger; (iii) the role of possible common etiological factors in explaining the observed comorbidity and overlap in the risk between anxiety phenotypes and anger. The study demonstrated that anger, assessed by CBCL items, is heritable in children at a similar rate to prior studies (40%). Our research found low to moderate rate of correlation between anger and anxiety (from 0.10 to 0.19). Finally, the present study found that the majority of etiological influences on anxiety and anger are independent of each other. Data showed that shared environmental influences have some small effects on the phenotypic covariation between the anxiety phenotypes and anger (12%); whereas unique environmental influences have an almost negligible effect (1%). Our analyses did not reveal the effect of genetic effects in explaining the covariation between these phenotypes.
ISSN:	1018-8827 1435-165X
DOI:	10.1007/s00787-020-01543-2