Gallery Presentation International Positive Psychology Association 7th IPPA World Congress 2021

Genetic evidence for bidirectional causal effects between resilience and wellbeing. (#169)

Lianne P. de Vries 1 2 , Bart M.L. Baselmans 3 , Jurjen J. Luykx 4 5 6 , Eveline L. de Zeeuw 1 2 , Camelia Minică 2 7 8 , Eco J.C. de Geus 2 , Christiaan H. Vinkers 9 10 , Meike Bartels 1 2
  1. Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam University Medical Centres, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  2. Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  3. Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
  4. Department of Psychiatry, UMC Utrecht, Brain Center, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  5. Department of Translational Neuroscience, UMC Utrecht Brain Center, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  6. Outpatient second opinion clinic, GGNet Mental Health, Warnsveld, The Netherlands
  7. Stanley Center for Psychiatric Disease, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
  8. Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA
  9. Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, Location VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  10. Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, Amsterdam UMC, Location VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Background

Resilience is defined as the ability to quickly recover after experiencing stress, returning to an optimal mental state. A strong correlation between resilience and wellbeing has been reported. People with higher wellbeing levels are more resilient after stressful events and vice versa.

Hypotheses/Research Questions

Less is known about the underlying sources of the association between resilience and wellbeing. We investigated the nature of the strong correlation and possible (bidirectional) causal effects between resilience and wellbeing.

Sample Characteristics and Sample Size

Data from two time points were included. The total sample consisted of 11.304 twins and 2.572 siblings from the Netherlands Twin Register. At time 1 (n=5.854), the mean age was 32.9 and 33.8% of the sample was male. At time 2 (n=11.552), the mean age was 31.7 and 32.3% of the sample was male.

Design

Resilience was defined as the absence of psychiatric symptoms despite having experienced stressful life events. Wellbeing was assessed with the Satisfaction With Life scale. We tested the cross-sectional and longitudinal phenotypic correlations between resilience and wellbeing. Using twin models and polygenic score analyses we tested potential for genetic confounding. Finally, we tried to falsify the causal hypotheses using different (genetically informed) approaches including within-subject change score regression, and the monozygotic twin differences design.

Results

We replicated the strong phenotypic correlations between resilience and wellbeing (~r=.5). Polygenic score analyses suggested overlap in genetic factors influencing both constructs. Twin-sibling modeling confirmed the genetic correlation (.71) and showed a strong environmental correlation (.93). The different causality analyses consistently showed bidirectional causality between the resilience and wellbeing

Scientific Contribution

The results from our large genetically informative sample suggest large overlap and bidirectional causal relationships between resilience and wellbeing. As both traits are negatively related to psychopathology, these mutual effects have implications for interventions to lower psychopathology vulnerability.


 

  • Keywords: Environment and Nature, Positive emotions, Resilience and Posttraumatic Growth