Disentangling genetic & environmental influences on anxiety & depression

Anxiety and depression are common and debilitating conditions that often begin in childhood, and when they do, show especially poor prognosis. As with all aspects of psychological development there are both genetic and environmental influences on anxiety and depression, but what is far more interesting is to explore the interplay between them. I will focus on two particular processes. First, genes and the environment are often correlated, such that those at high genetic risk of emotional difficulties are often also faced with environments that heighten this risk. I will describe work we have done using not only child twin data, but also data from children of adult twin pairs, to tease apart these factors. Second, genetic factors can also alter the extent to which individuals are responsive to the environment. In addition to exploring genetic factors that lead individuals to be at risk of poor outcome following stress, we have been examining genetic factors as predictors to psychological treatment, a new research area we have named therapygenetics.

Thalia C. Eley is based at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. She directs the Emotional Development, Intervention and Treatment lab (EDIT lab). Her work combines behavioural genetics with developmental psychology. Her interest in these areas stems from her school days where she was fascinated by how different her peers were in how they reacted to stress. This led her to study psychology at Cambridge University, and for her doctoral work she conducted a twin study of emotional development at the Institute of Child Health, University College London. After that time she was funded by two fellowships from the UK Medical Research Council and is now Professor of Developmental Behavioural Genetics. Using both quantitative and molecular genetic approaches she has focused on the ways in which genetic and environmental factors interact and correlate in the development, and more recently in the treatment of anxiety and depression. She has received numerous awards including the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society and the Lilly-Molecular Psychiatry Award. Prof Eley has three young boys and greatly enjoys the flexibility offered by an academic career alongside motherhood.