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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/childhood-adversity-associated-with-heightened-risk-of-early-death/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Childhood adversity associated with heightened risk of early death</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 17th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Experiences of abuse, neglect, or family dysfunction during childhood may have lasting effects on how long people live, especially if they also have chronic health conditions. A new study published in <em><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2840519" target="_blank">JAMA Pediatrics</a></em> found that adults with diabetes or hypertension who had experienced adverse childhood experiences faced a significantly higher risk of dying from any cause compared to those without such early-life adversity.</p>
<p>The study provides evidence that childhood adversity may contribute to mortality not only through mental health but also through chronic physical conditions. The findings support the idea that early-life experiences shape biological systems in ways that can increase vulnerability to serious illnesses later on.</p>
<p>“We were motivated by growing evidence that early-life adversity—such as abuse, neglect, or family dysfunction—can leave deep biological and psychological imprints,” said study author <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/psyepislu/home" target="_blank">Ping-I (Daniel) Lin</a>, an associate professor at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and adjunct associate professor at the University of New South Wales.</p>
<p>“Yet, its long-term impact on overall mortality risk had not been well quantified in large, representative samples. Our team wanted to bridge that gap by investigating how childhood adversity shapes lifelong health trajectories, not only through mental health but also through physical conditions that drive premature death.”</p>
<p>The team aimed to clarify whether adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, continue to affect health outcomes even after accounting for chronic illnesses. By focusing on adults with diabetes, hypertension, or recent non-severe emergency visits, the researchers hoped to understand how early adversity might contribute to mortality across a range of common medical settings.</p>
<p>The researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study using data from the TriNetX Analytics Network, a research platform that compiles deidentified health records from over 120 healthcare organizations across the United States. The study included adults aged 30 to 85 who were divided into three groups based on their health records: one group with diabetes, one with hypertension, and one with recent mild-to-moderate emergency department visits.</p>
<p>To isolate the effects of childhood adversity, the researchers excluded individuals with known psychiatric diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, psychosis, or neurodevelopmental disorders. This step was intended to reduce potential overlap between mental health conditions and ACE-related mortality risk.</p>
<p>Participants were further excluded if they had incomplete data, lacked documentation of ACE exposure, or showed extreme values in health biomarkers that might indicate an acute medical crisis. ACE exposure was identified through diagnostic codes reflecting childhood sexual abuse, forced labor, maltreatment, or psychological and physical abuse.</p>
<p>The researchers then tracked all-cause mortality in each group over time. They used statistical models to estimate the risk of death among people with and without documented ACEs, adjusting for age, sex, race, and other health indicators. In the diabetes group, they also accounted for body mass index and hemoglobin A1c levels, which are key markers of metabolic health.</p>
<p>Across all three groups, people with a history of childhood adversity were more likely to die from any cause than those without such a history. The association was strongest among adults with diabetes. In this group, individuals with ACE exposure had a mortality risk more than five times higher than those without ACEs. The hazard ratio was 5.59, meaning they were over five times as likely to die during the study period. This result was statistically significant, with a confidence interval ranging from 3.32 to 9.41.</p>
<p>In the hypertension group, the increase in mortality risk was smaller but still significant. Individuals with ACE exposure had a 74 percent higher risk of death, with a hazard ratio of 1.74. The confidence interval for this group ranged from 1.22 to 2.47.</p>
<p>Among those who had visited an emergency department for mild or moderate medical issues, a group chosen to represent more general or lower-acuity medical encounters, ACE exposure was linked to a 90 percent higher risk of death. The hazard ratio here was 1.90, with a confidence interval of 1.46 to 2.49.</p>
<p>“We were surprised by the magnitude of the mortality risk associated with diabetes among individuals exposed to childhood adversity—it was even higher than for many other major health conditions,” Lin told PsyPost. “This finding suggests that chronic stress in early life may interact with metabolic and inflammatory pathways, amplifying vulnerability to diseases like diabetes that have lifelong consequences. It highlights the complex interplay between psychological trauma and physical health.”</p>
<p>These results suggest that ACEs may contribute to physiological dysfunction and accelerate disease progression, especially in conditions like diabetes that are already affected by inflammation and stress. The patterns were consistent across groups, indicating that ACEs may act as an independent risk factor for early death even when medical conditions are taken into account.</p>
<p>“Childhood adversity is not just an emotional or psychological issue—it is a major determinant of life expectancy,” Lin said. “We found that individuals exposed to adversity in childhood face a significantly elevated risk of premature death, on par with traditional health risk factors like smoking or obesity. This means that preventing and addressing early adversity should be viewed as a public health priority, not just a mental health one.”</p>
<p>But as with all research, there are limitations to consider. One major issue is that ACE exposure was identified through diagnostic codes in health records. Many instances of childhood abuse or neglect go undiagnosed or undocumented, which means the study may have underestimated the true level of ACE exposure. This underreporting could lead to conservative estimates of the effects.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that mortality data came from electronic health records, which may not capture deaths that occurred outside the participating healthcare systems. This could affect the accuracy of the overall mortality rates. The researchers also did not separate different types or severities of ACEs, which might have distinct effects on health outcomes. It is possible that certain forms of early trauma are more strongly linked to long-term health risks than others. </p>
<p>The researchers hope future studies will examine the pathways through which early adversity affects health.</p>
<p>“Our next step is to uncover the biological and social mechanisms linking childhood adversity to early mortality,” Lin explained. “We plan to integrate genetic, inflammatory, and behavioral data to better understand who is most vulnerable—and how protective factors such as social support and emotion regulation might mitigate these risks. Ultimately, we hope this research informs targeted prevention strategies and more personalized mental health and medical care.</p>
<p>The researchers also emphasized that while the risks are real, they are not deterministic.</p>
<p>“Our results do not mean that childhood adversity inevitably leads to early death,” Lin said. “Risk is elevated, but not absolute. Many people show remarkable resilience despite difficult beginnings. Recognizing this nuance is important—it shifts the narrative from blame or fatalism to prevention and the promotion of protective factors that can buffer long-term health risks.”</p>
<p>Still, recognizing the long-term health effects of early trauma may help health professionals identify at-risk individuals.</p>
<p>“This study reinforces that childhood experiences have lifelong consequences for both mind and body,” Lin said. “Investing in early-life mental health support and family well-being should be considered a cornerstone of public health policy—because nurturing resilience early in life may be one of the most powerful ways to extend life itself.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2840519" target="_blank">Childhood Adversity and All-Cause Mortality Risk</a>,” was authored by Yesh Dhruva, Erick Messias, Yi-Chia Chen, and Ping-I Lin.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-discover-a-pets-fascinating-afterglow-effect-on-romantic-couples/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Scientists discover a pet’s fascinating “afterglow effect” on romantic couples</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 17th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075251383683" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Social and Personal Relationships</a></em> provides new evidence that having a pet present during interactions with romantic partners or friends may increase visible signs of positive emotion, such as smiling and laughing. These effects were especially noticeable for romantic partners and could even persist after the pet was no longer in the room.</p>
<p>Previous studies had produced mixed findings about the benefits of pet ownership, with some pointing to improved mood and life satisfaction, and others finding no effects or even negative ones. One reason for the inconsistent results may be that most studies focus only on pet ownership rather than the specific contexts in which pets are involved.</p>
<p>For instance, it may not be pet ownership itself that affects well-being, but how often people interact with their pets during social situations. Additionally, much of the prior research has relied on self-report surveys rather than direct behavioral observation, and most of it has been conducted with unfamiliar animals or in therapeutic contexts rather than everyday settings with people’s own pets.</p>
<p>“There has been a lot of research on the links between pet ownership and mental and physical health, and I believe it is now time to investigate the nuances of pet ownership in more detail and how it can impact different areas of humans’ lives, which could also explain the mechanisms underlying its positive links to well-being,” explained study author Ece Beren Barklam, who recently completed her PhD in psychology at Kingston University London.</p>
<p>“This is the first experimental study to explore this particular topic, and the findings encourage further research to establish how exactly pets affect romantic relationships and friendships, particularly when there are varying levels of closeness and satisfaction in both the human-human relationships and human-pet relationships.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers recruited 164 participants, formed of 37 romantic couple dyads and 45 friend dyads. All dyads had known each other for at least three months. Some participants were pet owners and others were not. Among the pet owners, half were randomly assigned to bring their pet dog or cat to the observation session, while the other half were assigned to a control condition with a large stuffed dog toy.</p>
<p>Non-pet owners also interacted with the stuffed toy. This design allowed the researchers to compare the effects of actual pets versus a lifelike but inanimate object. The pets included a mix of cats and dogs, varying in breed and size.</p>
<p>Each pair participated in three five-minute sessions in a room equipped with discreet cameras. In the first session, they interacted freely without any animal or toy. In the second, they interacted with either their pet or the stuffed toy. In the third session, the pet or toy was removed, and the pair interacted again.</p>
<p>The researchers used a standardized tool called OHAIRE-v3 to code video footage, focusing on positive facial expressions, such as smiling or laughing, as indicators of positive emotion. They also recorded and analyzed both observed and self-reported human-animal interactions, and they assessed participants’ mood using a validated questionnaire before and after each session.</p>
<p>The main finding was that pet presence was associated with more positive facial expressions than the presence of a stuffed animal. This effect was most noticeable in the second session, when the pet was present, but in romantic couples, the elevated emotional display continued into the third session even after the pet had been removed. This pattern was not found in friend dyads, suggesting that pets may have a longer-lasting influence on interactions between romantic partners compared to friends.</p>
<p>In the romantic couples, those who interacted with a pet in the room showed higher levels of smiling and laughing than non-pet owners who interacted with the stuffed toy. Pet owners who were assigned to the toy condition also showed somewhat higher levels of positive expression than non-pet owners, even though no real pet was present. The researchers speculate that this might reflect a “cognitive presence” of the pet, where pet owners think or talk about their animals during the interaction, possibly triggering similar emotional responses.</p>
<p>In friend dyads, pet presence had a more immediate effect, increasing positive expressions during the session when the pet was in the room. However, once the pet was removed, emotional display returned to earlier levels. This suggests that pets may act as social facilitators or emotional amplifiers in friendships, but the effect may be limited to the time when the pet is physically present.</p>
<p>The researchers also looked at changes in self-reported mood. Overall, mood improved from the start of the study to the first session, possibly due to the enjoyable nature of the interaction itself. In friend dyads, mood increased further after interacting with a pet, while those who interacted with a toy did not report any additional mood improvements. Among romantic couples, mood patterns were less consistent, but those who interacted with a pet tended to maintain their mood gains, while those in the toy condition did not.</p>
<p>One unexpected finding was that the participants’ observed behaviors with the pet, such as petting or feeding, were not linked to how positive they appeared or how good they reported feeling. However, participants’ own ratings of their interactions with the pet—how much they felt the pet was engaged with them—were associated with more smiling and laughing. This suggests that subjective perception of the interaction may be more relevant to emotional outcomes than objective measures of behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers also explored several secondary questions. They found that well-being, measured using a standard index, was not directly associated with pet ownership, pet attachment, or attitudes toward pets. However, among non-pet owners, those who had more positive attitudes toward pets tended to report higher romantic relationship satisfaction.</p>
<p>Among pet owners, those who saw their pet as a substitute for people also reported higher satisfaction with their romantic relationship. These findings raise the possibility that personal traits related to how individuals relate to animals might be linked to how they experience their human relationships.</p>
<p>“The results illustrate that pets can have a positive effect on humans’ facial expressions (e.g., smiling and laughing) and mood during social interactions with other humans, potentially even if the pet is not physically present, as pets can have a cognitive presence in humans’ minds in the form of thoughts and feelings,” Barklam told PsyPost. “This effect on social interactions could indirectly have a positive effect on humans’ overall well-being.”</p>
<p>“Interestingly, the effects seemed to be different for friends and romantic couples, where there might be a longer-lasting effect for those in more intimate relationships. It is also important to note that people who choose to have pets might have a variety of different personal characteristics from people who choose to not have pets, which might play an important role and requires further investigation.”</p>
<p>“For example, the results showed that while pet ownership itself was not directly linked to relationship satisfaction, more positive attitudes toward pets in non-pet owners were linked to higher romantic relationship satisfaction,” Barklam explained. “Overall, the findings can encourage people to spend more time together in the presence of their pets, and romantic couples could consider having a companion animal together to potentially enhance their relationships, if they have the desire and ability to care for a pet.”</p>
<p>The study, like all research, has some caveats. Participants were aware that they were being recorded, which might have influenced their behavior. In addition, the sample was mostly composed of people who had high levels of satisfaction with their friendships or relationships, limiting the ability to explore whether pets might help improve strained relationships.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the new findings suggest that pets may play a subtle but meaningful role in shaping human social experiences. Whether through physical presence or through memories and emotional associations, companion animals may help people feel closer to one another.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075251383683" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The effects of pets and human-pet interactions on humans’ romantic relationships and friendships</a>,” was authored by Ece Beren Barklam and Fatima Maria Felisberti.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/specific-parental-traits-are-linked-to-distinct-cognitive-skills-in-gifted-children/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Specific parental traits are linked to distinct cognitive skills in gifted children</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 16th 2025, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence13020012" target="_blank">Journal of Intelligence</a></em> provides evidence that different aspects of parents’ intelligence, education, and personality may influence the cognitive abilities of gifted children in distinct ways. The findings support the idea that giftedness in children is influenced by both inherited traits and environmental factors, although the nature of these influences appears to vary by cognitive domain.</p>
<p>While previous research has shown that parental education tends to predict children’s IQ, less is known about how parental intelligence and personality traits relate to cognitive outcomes in gifted children. Most studies have considered these influences separately and often focused only on full-scale IQ, rather than specific cognitive domains. In the new study, the researchers set out to examine whether particular characteristics of parents—including their cognitive abilities based on a well-established psychological framework and their personality traits—could predict the distinct intellectual strengths observed in gifted children.</p>
<p>The researchers were especially interested in the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of intelligence, which breaks cognitive functioning into several broad areas such as verbal comprehension, working memory, and processing speed. They also examined personality traits using the Five-Factor Model, which includes dimensions like conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience. By studying these variables together, the researchers aimed to clarify how parental characteristics may influence different aspects of their children’s cognitive profiles, rather than general intelligence alone.</p>
<p>The study involved 65 gifted children between the ages of 6 and 14, each with a full-scale IQ score of at least 120, which qualifies as “moderately gifted” according to several international guidelines. The sample included 21 girls and 44 boys, with an average age of roughly 10 years. Giftedness was determined using the WISC-IV, a widely used standardized intelligence test for children.</p>
<p>Where possible, both parents of each child were also assessed. A total of 65 mothers and 61 fathers completed cognitive tests based on the WAIS-IV, the adult version of the Wechsler intelligence scale. These tests allowed the researchers to assess five broad cognitive abilities derived from the CHC model: comprehension-knowledge, fluid reasoning, visual processing, short-term memory, and processing speed. Parents also completed the Big Five Inventory, a standard self-report questionnaire measuring personality traits.</p>
<p>The researchers focused on four key cognitive indices in children: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. Using both simple correlations and multivariate statistical modeling, the study explored how these cognitive abilities in children were related to their parents’ intelligence, education levels, and personality characteristics.</p>
<p>The findings revealed several domain-specific associations between parental traits and children’s cognitive scores. One of the most consistent results was the link between a mother’s processing speed and her child’s performance in the same area. Across different statistical models, maternal processing speed was the strongest predictor of children’s processing speed scores. This supports earlier research suggesting that this aspect of cognition may be passed down or influenced through shared environments and interactions.</p>
<p>Fathers’ short-term memory also showed a meaningful connection to children’s working memory scores. This association remained significant in both simple and multivariate analyses, suggesting that paternal cognitive abilities may influence how well children can retain and manipulate information over short periods.</p>
<p>Maternal education played a more specific role. In early analyses, it was associated with children’s verbal comprehension. However, in more complex models that accounted for additional parental traits, the strongest link was between maternal education and children’s perceptual reasoning, a cognitive domain involving the ability to understand and work with visual patterns and abstract relationships. This shift implies that maternal education may influence more than just language-based abilities and could contribute to broader intellectual development.</p>
<p>There was also some evidence that personality traits had an influence, although these effects tended to be weaker than cognitive and educational variables. Mothers who scored higher on conscientiousness—a trait associated with organization and responsibility—had children with higher perceptual reasoning scores. </p>
<p>In fathers, agreeableness was modestly associated with children’s perceptual reasoning in initial analyses, and with children’s working memory in the final, more complex models. These results suggest that parental personality may have a subtle but measurable impact on children’s intellectual functioning, possibly by shaping the emotional and behavioral environment at home.</p>
<p>Other traits and variables did not emerge as strong or consistent predictors. For example, neither maternal nor paternal verbal abilities were clearly linked to children’s verbal comprehension once other factors were controlled. Additionally, most personality traits did not show significant associations with children’s cognitive scores, with the exceptions being conscientiousness in mothers (linked to perceptual reasoning) and agreeableness in fathers (linked to working memory).</p>
<p>One important nuance in the findings was the different roles played by mothers and fathers. In general, mothers’ characteristics were more strongly related to children’s verbal and processing speed scores, while fathers’ traits showed clearer links to working memory. This pattern may reflect both genetic inheritance and differences in parenting roles and time spent with children, although the study did not directly test those explanations.</p>
<p>The study had some limitations that should be kept in mind. The sample size was relatively small, and some families contributed more than one child, which may have introduced statistical biases. While the researchers used appropriate statistical techniques to address this, they acknowledged that a larger, more diverse sample would provide stronger evidence.</p>
<p>Another limitation was the lack of a comparison group. Because all participating children were classified as gifted, the study cannot determine whether these parental influences are unique to gifted children or apply to children more broadly. Including non-gifted peers in future research would help clarify whether these patterns are specific to gifted populations or reflect general trends in cognitive development.</p>
<p>The wide age range of the children also presents a challenge. Cognitive abilities develop rapidly during childhood and adolescence, and the influence of parental traits may differ depending on the child’s developmental stage. Longitudinal research would be better suited to track these changes over time and identify when particular parental influences are most important.</p>
<p>Finally, although the study examined personality traits and cognitive abilities, it did not include other potentially relevant factors such as parenting style, family routines, or the home learning environment. These contextual variables could help explain how parental characteristics translate into cognitive outcomes for children and may be worth exploring in future studies.</p>
<p>Further research with larger, more diverse samples and broader measures of the home environment will be needed to confirm these findings and clarify the mechanisms involved. In the meantime, the study provides a more detailed picture of how parental traits may contribute to gifted children’s intellectual strengths and highlights the importance of considering both biological and environmental factors in understanding giftedness.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence13020012" target="_blank">The Role of Parental Education, Intelligence, and Personality on the Cognitive Abilities of Gifted Children</a>,” was authored by Lina Pezzuti, Morena Farese, James Dawe, and Marco Lauriola.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-rhythm-of-your-speech-may-offer-clues-to-your-cognitive-health/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">The rhythm of your speech may offer clues to your cognitive health</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 16th 2025, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study reveals that the rhythm and flow of our natural speech may offer insights into our cognitive health. Researchers found that characteristics like the frequency of pauses and filler words are associated with executive functions, the brain’s high-level management skills, suggesting that analyzing how we talk could one day become a simple method for monitoring brain function. The findings were published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00268" target="_blank">Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research</a>.</p>
<p>Executive functions are a set of mental processes that help us plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks. These abilities are fundamental to everyday life, from navigating a conversation to managing a complex project. </p>
<p>While it is understood that these functions can decline during normal aging, a more rapid decline can signal the onset of neurodegenerative conditions. Tracking these changes over time, however, presents a challenge because traditional cognitive tests can be affected by practice effects, where a person’s score improves simply from familiarity with the test. This can mask a genuine cognitive decline.</p>
<p>Seeking a more natural and repeatable way to assess these abilities, a team of researchers from the University of Toronto, Baycrest Hospital, and York University turned to speech. Spoken language is an everyday activity that is unlikely to be altered by repeated assessments. </p>
<p>Advanced automated tools can now analyze hundreds of features in a short speech sample, offering a detailed look at a person’s linguistic and cognitive state. While prior work has shown that speech analysis can help identify dementia, less has been known about its connection to the subtle cognitive variations seen in healthy adults across their lifespan.</p>
<p>The investigation was conducted in two parts. The first study involved 67 healthy older adults between the ages of 65 and 75. Each participant provided two 60-second audio recordings describing complex pictures. They also completed a series of established tests designed to measure various aspects of executive function, such as working memory, inhibition, and mental flexibility. </p>
<p>The researchers used a statistical technique to group the results of these cognitive tests into two main underlying components: one related to inhibition and working memory, and another related to verbal fluency and mental shifting.</p>
<p>To analyze the speech recordings, the team extracted more than 700 distinct linguistic features. To make this data manageable, they grouped these features into eight broad categories, or composites, based on language domains known to change in pathological aging. These composites included measures of syntactic complexity, vocabulary richness, and word-finding difficulty. The word-finding composite specifically captured elements like speech rate, the number and length of pauses, and the use of filler words like “um” and “uh.”</p>
<p>When the researchers examined the relationship between the speech composites and the executive function components, a clear pattern emerged. Of the eight speech categories, only word-finding difficulty was strongly associated with performance on the executive function tests. </p>
<p>Individuals who exhibited more signs of word-finding difficulty in their speech, such as more frequent hesitations, tended to have lower scores on both of the executive function components. This suggested that disfluencies in natural speech could be an indicator of broader cognitive control abilities in older adults.</p>
<p>The second study aimed to see if this connection between speech and executive function extended to a wider population. This time, the researchers recruited 174 healthy adults, with ages ranging from 18 to 90. Participants completed the same picture-description task, along with a different but related set of executive function tests. Again, the cognitive test results were distilled into two main components that were very similar to those identified in the first study.</p>
<p>For the speech analysis in this broader group, the researchers employed a different, data-driven strategy. Instead of grouping speech features based on prior knowledge of dementia, they used a large training dataset of speech samples from over 700 individuals to identify the most prominent patterns of variation within ten different speech domains. This process yielded a set of “speech domain scores” for each participant, including scores for domains like timing, syntax, and coherence.</p>
<p>The results of this second study reinforced the initial findings. The strongest associations were found within the timing domain of speech. Specifically, scores reflecting the frequency and duration of pauses were significantly related to the executive function component for verbal fluency and shifting. People who paused more, whether using short filled pauses or longer silent ones, tended to perform less well on tasks requiring mental flexibility and fluent word generation. </p>
<p>This result confirmed that speech timing is linked to executive abilities not just in older adults, but across the entire adult lifespan. Weaker associations were also noted between executive function and the coherence of speech, or how well a person stays on topic.</p>
<p>Jed A. Meltzer, a senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute and the study’s senior author, explains the significance of these findings. “The message is clear: speech timing is more than just a matter of style, it’s a sensitive indicator of brain health,” he states. The research highlights that natural speech can provide information about processing speed, a sensitive measure of cognitive health, in a way that is more reflective of real-world behavior than traditional, timed laboratory tasks.</p>
<p>The researchers note some limitations and avenues for future work. The fact that different speech analysis strategies were most effective for each of the two studies suggests that the best approach may depend on the population being studied. For older adults, focusing on features known to degrade in dementia was effective, while for a wider age range, a data-driven approach that captures normal variation worked better. The current study also provides a snapshot in time.</p>
<p>Future research should follow individuals over several years to observe how changes in their speech patterns might predict subsequent cognitive changes. According to Meltzer, this could lead to powerful new tools for monitoring brain health. “This research sets the stage for exciting opportunities to develop tools that could help track cognitive changes in clinics or even at home,” he says. “Early detection is critical for any cure or intervention, as dementia involves progressive degeneration of the brain that may be slowed.” By combining natural speech analysis with other measures, researchers hope to make the early detection of cognitive decline more precise and accessible.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00268" target="_blank">Natural Speech Analysis Can Reveal Individual Differences in Executive Function Across the Adult Lifespan</a>,” was authored by Hsi T. Wei, Dana Kulzhabayeva, Lella Erceg, Mira Kates Rose, Kiah A. Spencer, Jessica Robin, Ellen Bialystok, and Jed A. Meltzer.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-simple-writing-exercise-shows-promise-for-reducing-anxiety/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">A simple writing exercise shows promise for reducing anxiety</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 16th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study suggests that the vividness of a person’s fears about their future may be linked to anxiety through its effect on their self-esteem. The research, published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251315091" target="_blank">Psychological Reports</a></em>, indicates that having a very clear mental picture of a feared future self is associated with lower self-worth, which in turn is connected to higher anxiety. The work also explored a writing exercise that showed potential for reducing anxiety in the moment.</p>
<p>Our conceptions of who we might one day become, known as “possible selves,” shape our present motivations and emotions. These mental projections include both our hopes for the future, like becoming a successful artist, and our fears, such as failing in a career or being alone. The clarity of these future images can vary greatly from person to person, and this variation has captured the attention of psychologists studying mental health. Researchers have observed that individuals with higher anxiety often report more detailed and intense mental images of negative future events.</p>
<p>A team of researchers at York St John University in the United Kingdom sought to better understand this connection. The group, led by Jennifer Shevchenko, was interested in the mechanism behind the link between clear feared selves and anxiety. A common explanation, based on what is known as Attentional Control Theory, suggests that anxiety biases a person’s attention toward threats. This prolonged focus could naturally make threatening mental images, including feared future selves, seem more vivid. This perspective treats the clear images as a consequence of anxiety.</p>
<p>The researchers proposed an additional possibility: that the clarity of these feared selves could also actively contribute to anxiety. They hypothesized that self-esteem might be a key factor in this process. Self-esteem, which refers to a person’s overall sense of self-worth, is known to have a reciprocal relationship with anxiety; low self-esteem can be both a predictor and a consequence of anxiety symptoms. </p>
<p>The team wondered if experiencing a highly detailed vision of a feared future could feel so psychologically real that it damages a person’s current self-esteem, thereby feeding into their anxiety.</p>
<p>To investigate this, the researchers designed a two-part study involving 68 university students who participated online. For the first part of the study, they employed a correlational design, which examines relationships between different variables as they naturally occur. Participants completed several questionnaires. One was a standard assessment for generalized anxiety, and another measured self-esteem. They also completed a task where they described their “feared possible selves” and then rated how clear the mental images associated with these fears were.</p>
<p>The analysis of this data revealed several expected connections. Higher levels of anxiety were associated with lower levels of self-esteem. In addition, higher anxiety was associated with greater clarity of feared possible selves, meaning people with more anxiety tended to see their fears more vividly. A new connection was also identified: lower self-esteem was associated with having clearer images of a feared future.</p>
<p>The team then used a statistical method called mediation analysis to test their central hypothesis about the role of self-esteem. The results supported their prediction. The analysis showed that self-esteem accounted for the relationship between the clarity of feared selves and anxiety. </p>
<p>In simpler terms, the connection between having a vivid fear for the future and experiencing anxiety appeared to be channeled through a person’s sense of self-worth. Having a highly detailed mental picture of a feared future was linked to lower self-esteem, and this lower self-esteem was, in turn, associated with greater anxiety.</p>
<p>The second part of the study explored a potential intervention. Using a repeated-measures design, the researchers assessed participants’ anxiety levels at three different points. They measured anxiety at the beginning of the study, then again after the task where participants described their feared future, and a final time after they completed a writing exercise known as the Best Possible Self technique. This technique instructed participants to write in detail about a future in which everything had gone as well as it possibly could and they had achieved their goals.</p>
<p>After collecting the data, the researchers divided the participants into two groups based on their initial anxiety scores: a “probable anxiety” group and a “non-probable anxiety” group. The results showed that after writing about their feared selves, participants in the probable anxiety group reported a slight increase in their anxiety. By contrast, after completing the Best Possible Self writing exercise, participants in both groups reported a significant decrease in their anxiety levels compared to their baseline measurements.</p>
<p>The researchers acknowledge certain limitations to their work. The study was conducted with a sample of university students, so the findings may not apply to the broader population or to individuals with a clinical diagnosis of an anxiety disorder. Because the first part of the study was correlational, it identifies associations but cannot definitively prove that one factor causes another. The observed reduction in anxiety from the writing exercise was also measured immediately afterward, so it is unclear how long this effect might last.</p>
<p>Future research could build upon these findings by studying different populations, including those receiving treatment for anxiety. Longitudinal studies that follow participants over time would be useful for establishing the long-term effects of interventions like the Best Possible Self technique. The researchers also suggest that future experiments could directly measure whether the writing exercise works by improving self-esteem or by increasing the clarity of positive future selves. Such work could help refine simple, low-cost tools for managing anxiety.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251315091" target="_blank">Anxiety and Future-Self Clarity: Can Future Thinking Influence Self-Esteem?</a>,” was authored by Jessica Duffy, Grace Salt, Scott N. Cole, Divine Charura, and Jennifer Shevchenko.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/different-types-of-narcissism-are-linked-to-distinct-sexual-fantasies/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Different types of narcissism are linked to distinct sexual fantasies</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 16th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A study in Italy found that individuals with pronounced narcissistic traits are more likely to self-report having unusual, aggression-laden sexual fantasies and behaviors. The research was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.13129/2282-1619/mjcp-4887"><em>Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology</em></a>.</p>
<p>Narcissism is a group of psychological traits characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a deep need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others. It exists on a spectrum from normal self-confidence to pathological narcissistic personality disorder. Psychologists distinguish between grandiose narcissism, marked by arrogance and dominance, and vulnerable narcissism, marked by insecurity, hypersensitivity, and a need for reassurance.</p>
<p>Grandiose narcissists tend to seek power and status, while vulnerable narcissists often feel underappreciated and are easily hurt. There is also an extreme form called malignant narcissism that combines grandiosity and a lack of empathy with aggression, paranoia, and antisocial traits.</p>
<p>Narcissistic individuals may appear charming and confident at first but are prone to manipulating others to maintain a sense of superiority. They crave admiration and validation and tend to react angrily or defensively to criticism. In relationships, they often prioritize their own needs and struggle with genuine emotional intimacy.</p>
<p>Narcissistic individuals tend to idealize partners early on and later devalue them once the relationship no longer boosts their ego. They sometimes pursue multiple partners simultaneously or engage in risky sexual behavior to reinforce feelings of desirability and control. Over time, their relationships tend to become unstable due to a lack of empathy and emotional reciprocity.</p>
<p>Study author Antonella Somma and her colleagues wanted to assess the association between different manifestations of narcissism and sexual fantasies and behaviors in a group of adults. They note that while sexual fantasies—defined as constellations of mental imagery that are erotic or sexually arousing—play a central role in shaping sexual behavior, empirical research on the specific sexual interests of narcissistic individuals remains sparse.</p>
<p>The study involved 583 Italian adults with an average age of 31, of whom 63% were women and 28% were married.</p>
<p>Participants completed assessments of sexual fantasies (the Sexual Fantasies Inventory), sexual behavior (the Sexual Behavior Inventory), malignant narcissism (the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Short Form, Malignant Narcissism Index), and grandiose and vulnerable narcissism (the Five Factor Narcissism Inventory – Super Short Form).</p>
<p>The results revealed distinct patterns for each type of narcissism. Grandiose narcissism was linked to a broad range of sexual interests, including both conventional (“normophilic”) sex and fantasies involving power and dominance. In contrast, malignant narcissism was the strongest predictor of non-normophilic fantasies and behaviors, particularly those involving power dynamics (sadism, submission, humiliation) and intrusion (e.g., voyeurism).</p>
<p>Crucially, the study found that vulnerable narcissism showed no significant association with any of the sexual fantasies or behaviors measured.</p>
<p>“Our findings may improve extant knowledge on sexual fantasies and sexual behaviors and their associations with grandiose, vulnerable, and malignant narcissism, paving the way for additional research on the role of antagonistic personality dimensions as possible roots for non-normophilic [unusual] sexual fantasies and behaviors across different contexts,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the links between sexual fantasies, behaviors, and narcissism. However, because all data came from self-reports, the results could be affected by reporting bias. It therefore remains unknown whether narcissistic individuals are truly more likely to have unusual sexual interests or are simply more likely to report them (along with their narcissistic traits) in a research study.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.13129/2282-1619/mjcp-4887">Sexual Fantasies and Sexual Behaviors in the Perspective of Grandiose, Vulnerable, and Malignant Narcissism: A Community Study,</a>” was authored by Antonella Somma, Leda Mastinu, and Andrea Fossati.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/why-are-some-people-less-outraged-by-corporate-misdeeds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Why are some people less outraged by corporate misdeeds?</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 16th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study suggests that individuals who prefer social systems with clear hierarchies tend to judge corporate wrongdoing less harshly than people who favor equality. This tendency appears to be independent of whether a person identifies as politically liberal or conservative. The research, published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251383988" target="_blank">Social Psychological and Personality Science</a></em>, provides evidence for a consistent link between anti-egalitarian views and leniency toward corporate transgressions.</p>
<p>Researchers have devoted significant attention to understanding how ideology shapes moral judgments of individuals. However, less is known about how these beliefs influence perceptions of organizations, such as corporations, when they commit wrongdoing. Given that the ideologies of judges, politicians, and voters can affect the consequences for corporate misconduct, understanding this connection is of practical importance.</p>
<p>“This project was originally motivated by a seeming paradox: On the one hand, people who advocate for ‘corporate personhood’ doctrines tend to hold less egalitarian worldviews. Yet research in moral psychology suggests that attributing more human traits to actors is associated with holding them to higher moral standards,” said study author <a href="https://www.jeffreymlees.com/" target="_blank">Jeffrey Lees</a>, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Groningen.</p>
<p>“It seemed implausible that people who have more favorable views of large corporations would in turn be more (rather than less) harsh in response to corporate misconduct, so we sought to examine these relationships empirically and see if this paradox held.”</p>
<p>The investigation focused on a specific ideological preference known as social dominance orientation, or SDO. This is a psychological term for a person’s preference for social systems arranged in a hierarchy, where some groups have more power and status than others. People high in SDO tend to support ideas and actions that maintain or strengthen these social hierarchies.</p>
<p>The researchers reasoned that since many corporations are themselves hierarchical and can serve to enhance existing social inequalities, people high in SDO might view them more favorably. This could lead them to downplay the seriousness of corporate misconduct. They proposed a specific pathway for this effect: that people high in SDO might perceive offending corporations as having less “agency,” or the capacity to plan and act with intention. According to theories of moral psychology, attributing less agency to an entity generally leads to less blame.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the research team conducted a series of four main studies, along with several supplemental ones. The first study aimed to establish the basic relationship between SDO and moral judgments of corporate misbehavior. For this study, 127 participants were recruited online through Amazon’s TurkPrime platform.</p>
<p>These participants read five short, fictional scenarios describing different types of corporate misconduct. One scenario, for example, described a transportation company knowingly shipping counterfeit goods produced with sweatshop labor. After reading each story, participants rated how immoral, wrong, and unethical the company’s actions were. They also completed a 16-item questionnaire to measure their level of social dominance orientation and a single question about their political orientation, from very liberal to very conservative.</p>
<p>The analysis of this first study indicated that individuals with higher SDO scores tended to rate the corporate misconduct as less immoral. This relationship remained even after accounting for participants’ political orientation. This finding provides evidence that a preference for social hierarchy, specifically, is connected to more lenient judgments of corporate wrongdoing.</p>
<p>“Most people, including most liberals and conservatives, react very negatively to corporate misconduct, and want to see corporate misconduct punished,” Lees told PsyPost. “However, there is a small subset of the population who are quite lenient toward corporate misconduct, and that group of people are anti-egalitarians. These are people who like social hierarchy, they think a world where a small few rule and dominate over others is a good world, and they tend to endorse coercive actions that lead to such a world. These types of individuals also tend to be misery, selfish, and prejudicial.” </p>
<p>A second, larger study was designed to investigate the proposed explanation for this relationship, involving the perception of corporate agency. This study recruited 666 U.S. residents through the Prolific platform. Participants read four different vignettes about organizational misconduct, similar to those in the first study.</p>
<p>For each scenario, they rated the immorality of the company’s actions. They also rated the organization’s perceived “agency,” which included its capacity for intention and planning, as well as its “experience,” its capacity for feeling emotions and pain. Participants then completed the SDO scale and demographic questions. The order in which participants rated immorality and the corporation’s mental capacities was varied to see if one influenced the other.</p>
<p>The results of this study supported the researchers’ initial model. Higher SDO was associated with attributing less agency to the corporations, which in turn was linked to more lenient moral judgments. The findings suggest that the perception of a corporation’s ability to plan and act intentionally partially explains why people high in SDO are less condemnatory of its misdeeds.</p>
<p>To further test their ideas, the researchers designed a third study to see if the link between SDO and perceived agency would appear even in a neutral context, without any mention of misconduct. They also introduced the concept of perceived threat. The team recruited a nationally representative sample of 790 U.S. residents from Prolific.</p>
<p>Participants viewed an image of a generic corporate building and read a brief, neutral description of a fictional company. They then rated the company’s agency and experience, as well as how threatening, unfriendly, and antagonistic it seemed. Following this, they completed a short-form SDO scale.</p>
<p>Contrary to the researchers’ expectations from earlier, unpublished work, this study did not find a link between SDO and perceptions of corporate agency in this neutral context. SDO was also not associated with how threatening the corporation seemed. This result complicated the initial theory, suggesting the connection between SDO and perceived agency might only emerge when a company has done something wrong.</p>
<p>A fourth study returned to a scenario involving corporate wrongdoing to re-examine the roles of agency and threat. For this experiment, 766 participants from Prolific read about a company that knowingly transported counterfeit products. They then rated the company’s agency, its experience, and the level of “proximal threat” it posed, meaning how concerned or worried they would feel if the company operated in their own town.</p>
<p>Again, the evidence was not straightforward. People higher in SDO did report feeling less threatened by the misbehaving corporation, which aligned with the researchers’ predictions. However, SDO was not connected to how much agency they attributed to the company in this study, and perceived agency was not related to perceived threat. This pattern of results suggests the psychological mechanism behind the SDO-leniency link is more complex than originally hypothesized.</p>
<p>“The relationship between anti-egalitarian worldviews and leniency toward corporate misconduct was strong and consistent, including after controlling statistically for other ideological measures like liberalism-conservatism,” Lees added. “This provides strong evidence that the motives to maintain social hierarchy and inequality are a driving force behind leniency toward corporate misconduct.”</p>
<p>However, “to our surprise, anti-egalitarians do not exhibit any type of ‘corporate personhood’ preference. Even in the context of neutral corporations (i.e., with no mention of misconduct), anti-egalitarians are not more likely to attribute human qualities to corporations.”</p>
<p>Lees added that “our findings should not be interpreted to mean that anti-egalitarians are pro-misconduct. It is not that they are supportive of the harms of corporate misconduct, they just are much less likely to condemn that misconduct and want to see it punished.” </p>
<p>Future research could explore other potential mechanisms that might explain the findings. It may also be beneficial for researchers to examine different types of organizations, such as non-profits, or to develop more refined ways of measuring concepts like agency and threat in the context of corporate behavior. This work opens new avenues for understanding how deeply held ideological beliefs shape public responses to the actions of powerful organizations.</p>
<p>“Our next steps involve investigating the underlying cognitive mechanisms driving anti-egalitarians’ leniency,” Lees said. “Our study finds mixed evidence for the role of threat perceptions and personhood attributions, so we want to investigate this further.” </p>
<p>“This work is deeply indebted to the late Professor Jim Sidanius, who was working with us on this project when he passed away in 2021. He was a great mentor and inspiration, and he is sorely missed.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251383988" target="_blank">Anti-Egalitarians Are Lenient Toward Corporate Misconduct: Mixed Evidence for the Role of Threat and Mind Perception</a>,” was authored by Jeffrey Lees, Simone Tang, and James Sidanius.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-uncovers-distinct-genetic-blueprints-for-early-and-late-onset-depression/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Study uncovers distinct genetic blueprints for early- and late-onset depression</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 16th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study is providing a clearer picture of the genetic landscape of major depression, revealing that the disorder may have fundamentally different biological roots depending on the age at which it first appears. The research, published in <em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02396-8" target="_blank">Nature Genetics</a></em>, found that depression beginning in adolescence or young adulthood has a stronger genetic basis, is linked to early brain development, and carries a much higher genetic association with suicide attempts compared to depression that starts later in life.</p>
<p>Major depressive disorder is recognized as a clinically diverse condition, meaning its symptoms and course can vary substantially from person to person. Researchers have long suspected that this clinical variability might stem from different underlying causes. </p>
<p>One of the most apparent distinctions among individuals with depression is their age at onset. Depression that emerges early in life is often associated with more severe outcomes, including suicidal behavior, while late-onset depression has been linked more frequently to cognitive decline and cardiovascular problems.</p>
<p>To investigate whether these distinctions have a genetic basis, an international team of scientists from the Nordic TRYGGVE collaboration conducted a large-scale genetic study. The group leveraged the unique resources available in five Nordic countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. </p>
<p>These countries maintain comprehensive national health registries that track medical diagnoses over a person’s lifetime, allowing for a more objective way to determine the age of a first diagnosis, which serves as a reliable proxy for age of onset. This approach helped the researchers overcome challenges that have limited previous studies, such as reliance on patient memory and smaller sample sizes.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed anonymized genetic and health data from over 150,000 individuals diagnosed with depression and more than 360,000 people without a diagnosis. They divided the depression cases into two groups: an early-onset group, with a first diagnosis at or before age 25, and a late-onset group, with a first diagnosis at or after age 50. Using a technique known as a genome-wide association study, they scanned the DNA of all participants, looking for small genetic variations that were more common in one of the depression groups compared to the control group.</p>
<p>The analysis identified twelve distinct regions of the genome associated with early-onset depression and two regions associated with the late-onset form. A closer examination of the genes located in these regions provided clues about their biological function. For the early-onset group, four of the identified genes are known to play roles in neurodevelopment and the formation of connections between brain cells. </p>
<p>To explore this further, the team analyzed whether the genetic signals for each depression subtype were concentrated in specific types of human tissue. The genetic markers for early-onset depression were significantly enriched in tissues from the fetal brain, but not in adult brain tissues. This finding suggests that the genetic risk for this form of depression may influence how the brain is constructed early in development.</p>
<p>The study also quantified the extent to which common genetic variants contribute to the risk for each subtype. This measure, known as heritability, was estimated to be 11.2 percent for early-onset depression. This figure was nearly double the heritability for late-onset depression, which was estimated at 6 percent. The results indicate that inherited genetic factors play a substantially larger role in the development of depression in younger individuals compared to those who experience their first episode later in life.</p>
<p>Next, the researchers explored the genetic overlap between the two depression subtypes and other health conditions. They found that while the two forms of depression shared a moderate genetic link with each other, they had very different relationships with other psychiatric disorders. Early-onset depression showed a particularly strong genetic correlation with suicide attempt; the shared genetic basis was more than twice as strong as the correlation between late-onset depression and suicide attempt. </p>
<p>Advanced statistical modeling suggested that this link to suicide risk is primarily a feature of the early-onset form. When the model accounted for the shared genetics between the two subtypes, the association between late-onset depression and suicide attempt was greatly diminished.</p>
<p>To investigate potential causal relationships, the team employed a method called Mendelian randomization. This technique uses genetic variants as a proxy for a risk factor to assess its effect on an outcome. The results suggested that a genetic predisposition to early-onset depression may have a causal influence on the risk of a suicide attempt. This effect was significantly larger than the one observed for late-onset depression.</p>
<p>The scientists also calculated polygenic risk scores for each individual. These scores summarize a person’s inherited predisposition for a condition based on thousands or millions of genetic markers. They found that the polygenic risk score for early-onset depression was a stronger predictor of severe clinical outcomes, such as hospitalization and later diagnosis of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, compared to the risk score for late-onset depression.</p>
<p>“We show that early-onset depression has partly different genetic causes than depression that affects older individuals and that the risk of suicide attempts is increased,” said Yi Lu, a senior researcher at the Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and one of the study’s corresponding authors. “This is an important step towards precision medicine in psychiatry, where treatment and preventive measures are tailored to each individual.”</p>
<p>To understand the real-world implications, the researchers used the polygenic risk score for early-onset depression to stratify individuals based on their genetic risk for suicide attempt. Among people diagnosed with early-onset depression, those in the top 10 percent for genetic risk had a 26 percent cumulative incidence of a suicide attempt within ten years of their initial diagnosis. In contrast, those in the bottom 10 percent for genetic risk had a cumulative incidence of 12 percent over the same period.</p>
<p>“We hope that genetic information will be able to help healthcare professionals identify people at high risk of suicide, who may need more support and closer follow-up,” Lu said.</p>
<p>The study has some limitations. The analysis was conducted on individuals of European ancestry, and further research will be needed to see if these findings apply to more diverse populations. The researchers also note that their approach could be extended to explore the genetic architecture of other clinical features of depression, such as psychotic symptoms or the level of disability. The team plans to investigate how the identified genetic differences relate to brain development, stress, and life experiences.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41588-025-02396-8" target="_blank">Genome-wide association analyses identify distinct genetic architectures for early-onset and late-onset depression</a>,” was authored by John R. Shorter, Joëlle A. Pasman, Siim Kurvits, Andreas Jangmo, Joonas Naamanka, Arvid Harder, Espen Hagen, Kaarina Kowalec, Nelli Frilander, Richard Zetterberg, Joeri J. Meijsen, Jesper R. Gådin, Jacob Bergstedt, Ying Xiong, Sara Hägg, Mikael Landén, Christian Rück, John Wallert, Alkistis Skalkidou, Elise Koch, Bayram C. Akdeniz, Oleksandr Frei, FinnGen, Iiris Hovatta, Ted Reichborn-Kjennerud, Thomas M. Werge, Patrick F. Sullivan, Ole A. Andreassen, Martin Tesli, Kelli Lehto, Alfonso Buil & Yi Lu.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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