The structure of genetic and environmental risk factors for fears and phobias. Issue 11 (August 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Loken, E. K.; Hettema, J. M.; Aggen, S. H.; Kendler, K. S.
• Is Part Of: Psychological medicine. Volume 44:Issue 11(2014)
• Page Start: 2375
• Page End: 2384
• Publication Date: 2014-08
• Subjects: Psychiatry -- Periodicals; Medicine and psychology -- Periodicals; Clinical psychology -- Periodicals; 616.89
• DOI: 10.1017/S0033291713003012
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0033-2917

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="normal"> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <sec id="sec_a1"> <title>Background</title> <p>Although prior genetic studies of interview-assessed fears and phobias have shown that genetic factors predispose individuals to fears and phobias, they have been restricted to the DSM-III to DSM-IV aggregated subtypes of phobias rather than to individual fearful and phobic stimuli.</p> </sec> <sec id="sec_a2" sec-type="methods"> <title>Method</title> <p>We examined the lifetime history of fears and/or phobias in response to 21 individual phobic stimuli in 4067 personally interviewed twins from same-sex pairs from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Abuse Disorders (VATSPSUD). We performed multivariate statistical analyses using Mx and Mplus.</p> </sec> <sec id="sec_a3" sec-type="results"> <title>Results</title> <p>The best-fitting model for the 21 phobic stimuli included four genetic factors (agora-social-acrophobia, animal phobia, blood-injection-illness phobia and claustrophobia) and three environmental factors (agora-social-hospital phobia, animal phobia, and situational phobia).</p> </sec> <sec id="sec_a4" sec-type="conclusion"> <title>Conclusions</title> <p>This study provides the first view of the architecture of genetic and environmental risk factors for phobic disorders and their subtypes. The genetic factors of the phobias support the DSM-IV and DSM-5 constructs of animal and blood-injection-injury phobias but do not support the separation of agoraphobia from social phobia. The results also do not show a coherent genetic factor for the DSM-IV and DSM-5 situational phobia. Finally, the patterns of co-morbidity across individual fears and phobias produced by genetic and environmental influences differ appreciably.</p> </sec> </abstract>