Insights Into Suicide and Depression

In this article, using Swedish national samples, Kendler et al. use a unique design to understand factors associated with the parental transmission of suicide attempts and death by suicide. The "expanded adoption design" included comparisons among intact nuclear families, families in which...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of psychiatry Vol. 177; no. 10; pp. 877 - 880
Main Author: Kalin, Ned H
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Washington American Psychiatric Association 01-10-2020
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Summary:In this article, using Swedish national samples, Kendler et al. use a unique design to understand factors associated with the parental transmission of suicide attempts and death by suicide. The "expanded adoption design" included comparisons among intact nuclear families, families in which the biological father was not present, families with a stepfather, and adoptive families. Use of this design allowed for an understanding of the relations between parents and children in regard to suicidal behavior for genes only, for rearing only, or for both genes and rearing. Consistent with earlier work, results demonstrated involvement of both genetics and rearing. Interestingly, the parental transmission of suicide attempts was found to be relatively strong compared with the parental transmission of death by suicide. Moreover, the parental transmission to sons for suicide attempts was found to be stronger than it was to daughters. The researchers also found strong effects of parental psychiatric illness on suicide risk that appeared to be mediated by genetic, and not rearing, differences. In addition, the authors draw the conclusion from their data that suicide attempts and death by suicide arc not likely to be on a simple continuum but rather may represent the product of different underlying genetics.
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ISSN:0002-953X
1535-7228
DOI:10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20081207