2022 Articles

Thinner cortices in high-risk offspring: the promises of big data

Weissman, Myrna M.; Talati, Ardesheer

The hottest news in psychiatric epidemiology is the availability of large, well-characterized, diverse samples with clinical and biological assessments that have recently become available from repositories to qualified scientists. Big Data has come to psychiatry [1]. For years, we have studied families at high and low risk for depression in samples of several hundred offspring and grandchildren [2]. They include carefully documented clinical assessments and later MRI, EEG, and DNA. The studies clearly showed the early onset of symptoms, often before puberty, challenging the notion that major depression was a disorder of menopausal women, or the question, when the study began, whether children had sufficient ego development to become depressed. The follow up over the years showed the enduring nature of depression in high-risk offspring and grandchildren, particularly grandchildren with two previous generations affected.