Why do people have multiple mental disorders and why do different mental disorders share common causes and consequences? Data from 3 nations and 3 generations

On March 9th and 10th, we are happy to welcome Prof. Terrie Moffitt and Prof. Avshalom Caspi, who will give back-to-back MPLS talks.

Avshalom Caspi’s research spans the fields of psychology, epidemiology, and genetics. His work is concerned with three questions. (1) How do childhood experiences shape aging trajectories? (2) How do mental health problems unfold across and shape the life course? (3) What are the best ways to assess and measure accelerated aging? Caspi completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University. He worked in (West) Berlin, and served on the faculty at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin before moving to London and then Duke. He is the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, Professor of Personality Development at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience, King’s College London, Research Professor at the University of Oslo, and Honorary Professor at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is the co-editor of the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. For his research, Dr. Caspi has received both the American Psychological Association's Early Career Contribution Award and Distinguished Career Award. Dr. Caspi was also awarded a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, the Mortimer D. Sackler MD Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Developmental Psychobiology, the NARSAD Ruane Prize for Outstanding Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize. Learn more at www.moffittcaspi.com.

Prof. Caspi's talk will explore how various mental disorders are perhaps more similar than they are distinct. Most etiological research on mental disorders tries to find specific causes of specific disorders, such as: What genetic factors cause schizophrenia? What altered brain morphology causes ADHD? What types of childhood adversity cause depression? However, the search for causal specificity has been elusive: Mental disorders share most risk factors. One possible reason for why the search for specificity has been elusive is that most disorders are more similar than they are distinct, an idea that has prompted research on “p”—the tendency of a person to develop a wide range of different mental disorders. Here we bring together data from unique sources to provide the intergenerational and developmental empirical evidence base for understanding “p.” Men and women with a history of mental disorders tend to mate with partners who are also prone to have mental disorders, but not necessarily the same disorders. This creates a situation whereby their offspring, whether through genetic and/or environmental transmission, are at heightened risk of developing a variety of different mental disorders. But which specific disorder offspring ultimately develop is not easy to predict. Given that offspring receive genetic and environmental vulnerabilities to multiple different disorders, it may not surprise that people develop different disorders at different points throughout their lives. But which disorder emerges when is difficult to foretell. We discuss the implications of these findings for psychiatric nosology, for measurement and for design practices in psychopathology, and for delivering more effective treatments.