ArticlePsychological medicine2008
How should we construct psychiatric family history scores? A comparison of alternative approaches from the Dunedin Family Health History Study.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Why psychopathology research should avoid studying one mental disorder at a time: An intergenerational and developmental evidence base for understanding "p".Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2026Review
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- Familial load of psychiatric disorders and overall functioning in patients newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder and their unaffected first-degree relatives.International journal of bipolar disorders · 2022Article
- Use of Population-Level Administrative Data in Developmental Science.Annual review of developmental psychology · 2022Article
- Association between genetic and socioenvironmental risk for schizophrenia during upbringing in a UK longitudinal cohort.Psychological medicine · 2022Article
- Familial risk for depressive and anxiety disorders: associations with genetic, clinical, and psychosocial vulnerabilities.Psychological medicine · 2022Article
- Vital personality scores and healthy aging: Life-course associations and familial transmission.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Article
- Developing community-based health education strategies with family history: Assessing the association between community resident family history and interest in health education.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Article
- Intersection of familial risk and environmental social control on high-risk drinking and alcohol dependence in a US national sample of adults.Addictive behaviors · 2021Article
- Heterogeneity Within Youth With Childhood-Onset Conduct Disorder in the ABCD Study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Density and Dichotomous Family History Measures of Alcohol Use Disorder as Predictors of Behavioral and Neural Phenotypes: A Comparative Study Across Gender and Race/Ethnicity.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2020Article
- Mental Health and Functional Outcomes in Young Adulthood of Children With Psychotic Symptoms: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2020Article
- Association of Air Pollution Exposure With Psychotic Experiences During Adolescence.JAMA psychiatry · 2019Article
- Exploration of NOPsychiatry research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThere is increased interest in assessing the family history of psychiatric disorders for both genetic research and public health screening. It is unclear how best to combine family history reports into an overall score. We compare the predictive validity of different family history scores.
methodProbands from the Dunedin Study (n=981, 51% male) had their family history assessed for nine different conditions. We computed four family history scores for each disorder: (1) a simple dichotomous categorization of whether or not probands had any disordered first-degree relatives; (2) the observed number of disordered first-degree relatives; (3) the proportion of first-degree relatives who are disordered; and (4) Reed's score, which expressed the observed number of disordered first-degree relatives in terms of the number expected given the age and sex of each relative. We compared the strength of association between each family history score and probands' disorder outcome.
resultsEach score produced significant family history associations for all disorders. The scores that took account of the number of disordered relatives within families (i.e. the observed, proportion, and Reed's scores) produced significantly stronger associations than the dichotomous score for conduct disorder, alcohol dependence and smoking. Taking account of family size (i.e. using the proportion or Reed's score) produced stronger family history associations depending on the prevalence of the disorder among family members.
conclusionsDichotomous family history scores can be improved upon by considering the number of disordered relatives in a family and the population prevalence of the disorder.
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