Childhood Adoption and Mental Health in Adulthood: The Role of Gene-Environment Correlations and Interactions in the UK Biobank

Abstract

Background: Being adopted early in life, an indicator of exposure to early-life adversity, has been consistently associated with poor mental health outcomes in adulthood. Such associations have largely been attributed to stressful environments, e.g., exposure to trauma, abuse, or neglect. However, mental health is substantially heritable, and genetic influences may contribute to the exposure to childhood adversity, resulting in potential genetic confounding of such associations. Methods: Here, we explored associations between childhood adoption and mental health–related outcomes in midlife in 243,797 UK Biobank participants (n adopted = 3151). We used linkage disequilibrium score regression ..