Genetic Links to anxiety & depression (GLAD) study: Online recruitment into largest recontactable study of depression & anxiety, 2019, Davies et al

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
Highlights

• Online recruitment of 40,000 individuals with lifetime depression or anxiety.
• Detailed online phenotyping combined with genetic and clinical data.
• The study sample is severe, highly comorbid, with chronic psychopathology.
• The study protocol enables recall of participants for future research and trials.

Abstract
Background
Anxiety and depression are common, debilitating and costly. These disorders are influenced by multiple risk factors, from genes to psychological vulnerabilities and environmental stressors, but research is hampered by a lack of sufficiently large comprehensive studies. We are recruiting 40,000 individuals with lifetime depression or anxiety and broad assessment of risks to facilitate future research.

Methods
The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study (www.gladstudy.org.uk) recruits individuals with depression or anxiety into the NIHR Mental Health BioResource. Participants invited to join the study (via media campaigns) provide demographic, environmental and genetic data, and consent for medical record linkage and recontact.

Results
Online recruitment was effective; 42,531 participants consented and 27,776 completed the questionnaire by end of July 2019. Participants’ questionnaire data identified very high rates of recurrent depression, severe anxiety, and comorbidity. Participants reported high rates of treatment receipt. The age profile of the sample is biased toward young adults, with higher recruitment of females and the more educated, especially at younger ages.

Discussion
This paper describes the study methodology and descriptive data for GLAD, which represents a large, recontactable resource that will enable future research into risks, outcomes, and treatment for anxiety and depression.
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Open access, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796719301895
 
Anxiety and depression are the most common psychiatric disorders worldwide, with a lifetime prevalence of at least 30%
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That seems excessively overdiagnosed. Hopefully this leads to better diagnostic tools that reduce this absurdly inflated number. Being able to reliably diagnose those two would go a long way to removing a lot of the noise in medicine.

The 80:20 female:male ratio is a bit on the suspicious side as to the reliability of diagnosis. If the standard tools used in practice are not reliable, very likely, it will only perpetuate those flaws. Recruitment pool was mainly from IAPT clinics and KCL, then online.
 
Anxiety and depression are the most common psychiatric disorders worldwide, with a lifetime prevalence of at least 30%
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If by that they mean at some stage in a person's life they see a doctor because they are depressed or anxious, that figure doesn't surprise me. They are including life events as causes. Most people suffer bereavement, relationship breakdown, loss of job etc at some stage in their life, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if quite a few seek some medical help to get through it, whether referral for counselling or medication - I have.

That is different from what this study was looking for I think - people with a lifelong depression and/or anxiety disorder that is chronically disabling. That would be a lot less than 30%.
 
Oh I nearly participated in this but then didn't because it was too much effort.
Or maybe it was because I didn't meet inclusion criteria. Can't remember
 
Re the female to male ratio in participants - could be because males may be more reluctant to admit they have depression/anxiety by taking part in a study?
 
Oh they're still recruiting... I might try again, given I have more energy to work with these days than I did when I tried before.
 
Potential perk of taking part is that you can ask them to give you your genetic data if you wish... I imagine that'd be more accurate than 23andme
 
The number of authors is astonishing - over 50 individuals plus a consortium of some kind, all from the UK apart from two - one from the Republic of Ireland, the other from Sweden.

The whole thing will be interpreted and puffed off in a way that saves the NHS money and screws patients, I'm sure of it.

Sarah94 said:
Potential perk of taking part is that you can ask them to give you your genetic data if you wish... I imagine that'd be more accurate than 23andme
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If I had given the reliability of the data any thought at all I would have guessed completely the opposite. I would expect a commercial company with years of experience would know more about genetic testing than a group of academics with only theoretical knowledge and little or no practical experience. But maybe I'm just too cynical.

Sarah94 said:
Is this what's called a GWAS?
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What is a GWAS?
 
Trish said:
If by that they mean at some stage in a person's life they see a doctor because they are depressed or anxious, that figure doesn't surprise me. They are including life events as causes. Most people suffer bereavement, relationship breakdown, loss of job etc at some stage in their life, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if quite a few seek some medical help to get through it, whether referral for counselling or medication - I have.

That is different from what this study was looking for I think - people with a lifelong depression and/or anxiety disorder that is chronically disabling. That would be a lot less than 30%.
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The effort going into diagnosis of depression and anxiety can sometimes be shockingly lazy. And it's rarely overturned even when an actual explanation is found, instead turned into either the association or risk factor that BPS folks love to point at.

I once saw an ENT to check for explanations for dizziness and lightheadedness, mentioned my tinnitus and the doc said it's probably anxiety. Zero questions asked. No idea if that's the conclusion on my file but I would not be surprised.

On the anxiety personality spectrum, I range somewhere between a capybara and a highly sedated capybara. Yet it is probably in my files from multiple sources. Likely not as MDD or GAD but still, a lot of it is noise that should not be there and must factor in statistics in some way.
 
Are they providing participants with their complete whole-genome sequence data?

It will be interesting if they find anything with high sensitivity, but I doubt they will.
 
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