Thalia C Eley

• PhD
• King's College London

Anxiety disorders are are chronic, pervasive, and debilitating; characterised by a persistent or exaggerated response to distal or abstract threats. Impaired threat discrimination (distinguishing safe from threatening stimuli) and impaired threat extinction (learning a once threatening stimulus is now safe), are known risk factors in the developmen...

IntroductionThe UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) is the national Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for the UK's longitudinal research community, supporting the UK's unparalleled collection of Longitudinal Population Studies (LPS). Initially set up as a COVID-19 research resource, UK LLC is now a generic database for any research for...

Depression is a risk factor for the later development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but evidence for the genetic relationship is mixed. Assessing depression symptom-specific genetic associations may better clarify this relationship. To address this, we conducted genome-wide meta-analysis (a genome-wide association study, GWAS) of the nine depression...

Background Mental health problems and traits capturing psychopathology are common and often begin during adolescence. Decades of twin studies indicate that genetic factors explain around 50% of individual differences in adolescent psychopathology. In recent years, significant advances, particularly in genomics, have moved this work towards more tra...

Background The identification of predictors of treatment response is crucial for improving treatment outcome for children with anxiety disorders. Machine learning methods provide opportunities to identify combinations of factors that contribute to risk prediction models. Methods A machine learning approach was applied to predict anxiety disorder r...

Anxiety sensitivity may be associated with both anxiety and eating disorder symptoms, which could contribute to the frequent comorbidity of both syndromes. This study examined the common (i.e., correlated) genetic and environmental contributions to anxiety sensitivity, cognitive symptoms of eating disorder severity, and anxiety symptoms to understa...

Childhood maltreatment and intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization are major psychiatric risk factors. Maltreatment substantially increases the likelihood of subsequent IPV victimization, but what drives this association is poorly understood. We analyzed retrospective self-reports of maltreatment and IPV victimization in 12,794 participants (...

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common and heritable neurodevelopmental condition that has been the subject of a wealth of genetics research. Because ADHD has an early age of onset, most of this work has focused on children, meaning that less is known about the genetics of ADHD in adults. Additionally, while much research has a...

Motivation: Growth curve modelling is one method used to model trajectories of traits and behaviours over time. However, accessing, analysing and interpreting trajectories requires statistical expertise, thereby creating potential barriers for users to implement and understand longitudinal traits. TIDAL is a user-friendly research tool designed to...

Background Whether emotional problems during childhood and adolescence are longitudinally associated with adult alcohol use behaviors is unclear. This study examined associations between developmental trajectories of emotional problems and early adult alcohol use behaviors, while considering co‐occurring conduct problems, developmental change/timin...

Importance Studies on polygenic risk for psychiatric traits commonly use a disorder-level approach to phenotyping, implicitly considering disorders as homogeneous constructs; however, symptom heterogeneity is ubiquitous, with many possible combinations of symptoms falling under the same disorder umbrella. Focusing on individual symptoms may shed li...

Background Children and adolescents demonstrate diverse patterns of symptom change and disorder remission following cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. To better understand children who respond sub‐optimally to CBT, this study investigated youths (N = 1,483) who continued to meet criteria for one or more clinical anxiety diag...

Antidepressants are the most common treatment for moderate or severe depression. Side effects are crucial indicators for antidepressants, but their expression varies widely among individuals. In this study, we leveraged genetic and medical data from self-reported questionnaires in the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) study to build pr...

Greater environmental sensitivity has been associated with increased risk of mental health problems, especially in response to stressors, and lower levels of subjective wellbeing. Conversely, sensitivity also correlates with lower risk of emotional problems in the absence of adversity, and in response to positive environmental influences. Additiona...

Evidence indicates a great degree of genetic overlap between psychiatric diagnoses. Accounting for these transdiagnostic effects can sharpen research on disorder-specific genetic architecture. Here we isolate genetic effects that are shared across 11 major psychiatric disorders (p factor) to gain further insight into genetic specificity and comorbi...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about dramatic changes in how patients access healthcare from its outset. Lockdown restrictions and remote working led to a proliferation of digital technologies and services, which also impacted mental health provisions. Against the backdrop of new and changing support services, along with an unprecedented emphasis on...

Considerable evidence supports the role of present-moment attention, a central feature of mindfulness, in subjective wellbeing maintenance and enhancement. Yet it is not clear why such a relation exists. This study examined the genetic and environmental contributions of present-moment attention to subjective wellbeing. Consistent with the “generali...

Background: The association between weight and depressive symptoms is well established, but the direction of effects remains unclear. Most studies rely on body mass index (BMI) as the sole weight indicator, with few examining the aetiology of the association between weight indicators and depressive symptoms. Methods: We analysed data from the Tw...

Objective: Previous population-based studies have identified associations between childhood neurodevelopmental traits and depression in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. However, neurodevelopmental traits are highly correlated with each other, which could confound associations when traits are examined in isolation. The authors sought to...

Objective: The United Kingdom Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative (EDGI UK), part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health BioResource, aims to deepen our understanding of the environmental and genetic etiology of eating disorders. EDGI UK launched in February 2020 and is partnered with the UK eating disorders c...

Underlying classes capture differences between patient symptom trajectories during psychological therapy. This has not been explored for one-to-one internet-delivered therapy or functional impairment trajectories. Patients experiencing depression or anxiety received cognitive-behavioural therapy with a therapist using an online chat platform (N = 5...

Background The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study is a large cohort of individuals with lifetime anxiety and/or depression, designed to facilitate re-contact of participants for mental health research. At the start of the pandemic, participants from three cohorts, including the GLAD Study, were invited to join the COVID-19 Psychia...

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) provide biological insights into disease onset and progression and have potential to produce clinically useful biomarkers. A growing body of GWAS focuses on quantitative and transdiagnostic phenotypic targets, such as symptom severity or biological markers, to enhance gene discovery and the translational utili...

Objectives: People with bipolar disorder who also report binge eating have increased psychopathology and greater impairment than those without binge eating. Whether this co-occurrence is related to binge eating as a symptom or presents differently across full-syndrome eating disorders with binge eating is unclear. Methods: We first compared netw...

Depression is a risk factor for the later development of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but evidence for their genetic relationship is mixed. Assessing depression symptom specific genetic associations may better clarify this relationship. Using data from the UK Biobank, the GLAD Study and PROTECT, we performed the largest genome-wide meta-analyses (GWAS...

Background Emotional symptoms, such as anxiety and depressive symptoms, are common during adolescence, often persist over time, and can precede the emergence of severe anxiety and depressive disorders. Studies suggest that a vicious cycle of reciprocal influences between emotional symptoms and interpersonal difficulties may explain why some adolesc...

The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) is a common screening tool for bipolar disorder that assesses manic symptoms. Its utility for genetic studies of mania or bipolar traits has not been fully examined. We psychometrically compared the MDQ to self-reported bipolar disorder in participants from the United Kingdom National Institute of Health and Ca...

Diathesis‐stress models conceptualise individual differences in propensity for psychopathology as an interaction between environmental risk factors and intra‐individual vulnerabilities. In contrast, the differential susceptibility theory and related frameworks view intra‐individual differences as variations in sensitivity to the environments rather...

The Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) is a longitudinal study following a cohort of twins born 1994–1996 in England and Wales. Of the 13,759 families who originally consented to take part, over 10,000 families remain enrolled in the study. The current focus of TEDS is on mental health in the mid‐twenties. Making use of over 25 years of genetical...

Background Decades of research have shown that environmental exposures, including self-reports of trauma, are partly heritable. Heritable characteristics may influence exposure to and interpretations of environmental factors. Identifying heritable factors associated with self-reported trauma could improve our understanding of vulnerability to expos...

Background A joint, hierarchical structure of psychopathology and personality has been reported in adults but should also be investigated at earlier ages, as psychopathology often develops before adulthood. Here, we investigate the joint factor structure of psychopathology and personality in eight-year-old children, estimate factor heritability and...

Only one study has examined bidirectional causality between sexual minority status (having same-sex attraction) and psychological distress. We combined twin and genomic data from 8700 to 9700 participants in the UK Twins Early Development Study cohort at ≈21 years to replicate and extend these bidirectional causal effects using separate unidirectio...

Background: There is substantial variation in patient symptoms following psychological therapy for depression and anxiety. However, reliance on endpoint outcomes ignores additional interindividual variation during therapy. Knowing a patient's likely symptom trajectories could guide clinical decisions. We aimed to identify latent classes of patient...

Background Despite being considered a measure of environmental risk, reported life events are partly heritable. One mechanism that may contribute to this heritability is genetic influences on sensitivity, relating to how individuals process and interpret internal and external signals. The aim of this study was to explore the genetic and environment...

Background: The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study is a large cohort of individuals with lifetime anxiety and/or depression, designed to facilitate re-contact of participants for mental health research. At the start of the pandemic, participants from three cohorts, including the GLAD Study, were invited to join the COVID-19 Psychi...

Background While studies from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have described initial negative effects on mental health and exacerbating mental health inequalities, longer-term studies are only now emerging. Method In total, 34 465 individuals in the UK completed online questionnaires and were re-contacted over the first 12 months of the pandemi...

Background Individual differences in symptoms of behaviour problems in childhood and adolescence are not primarily due to nature or nurture – another substantial source of variance is non‐shared environment (NSE). However, few specific environmental factors have been found to account for these NSE estimates. This creates a ‘missing NSE' gap analogo...

Background Progress towards stratified care for anxiety and depression will require the identification of new predictors. We collected data on retrospectively self-reported therapeutic outcomes in adults who received psychological therapy in the UK in the past ten years. We aimed to replicate factors associated with traditional treatment outcome me...

Objective The Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative United Kingdom (EDGI UK), part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health BioResource, aims to deepen our understanding of the environmental and genetic aetiology of eating disorders. EDGI UK launched in February 2020 and is partnered with the UK eating disorders ch...

Background Anxiety and depressive disorders often co-occur and the order of their emergence may be associated with different clinical outcomes. However, minimal research has been conducted on anxiety-anxiety comorbidity. This study examined factors associated with anxiety comorbidity and anxiety-MDD temporal sequence. Methods Online, self-report d...

Objective: The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with poor mental health, including increases in eating disorders and self-harm symptoms. We investigated risk and protective factors for the new onset of these symptoms during the pandemic. Method: Data were from the COVID-19 Psychiatry and Neurological Genetics study...

Background Despite being considered a measure of environmental risk, reported life events are partly heritable. One mechanism that may contribute to their heritability is genetic influences on sensitivity. These sensitivity biases can relate to how individuals process the contextual aspects of their environment (environmental sensitivity) or how th...

Background: Trajectories of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits spanning early childhood to mid-life have not been described in general populations across different geographical contexts. Population trajectories are crucial to better understanding typical developmental patterns. Methods: We combined repeated assessments of ADH...

Background: Retrospective self-reports of childhood trauma are associated with a greater risk of psychopathology in adulthood than prospective measures of trauma. Heritable reporter characteristics are anticipated to account for part of this association, whereby genetic predisposition to certain traits influences both the likelihood of self-report...

Importance: Socioeconomic factors are associated with the prevalence of depression, but their associations with prognosis are unknown. Understanding this association would aid in the clinical management of depression. Objective: To determine whether employment status, financial strain, housing status, and educational attainment inform prognosis...

Aims: Here we report the results of the first systematic investigation of genetic and environmental influences on 57 psychological traits covering major issues in emerging adulthood such as aspirations, thoughts and attitudes, relationships and personality. We also investigate how these traits relate to physical and mental health, educational atta...

Genome-wide association (GWA) studies have uncovered DNA variants associated with individual differences in general cognitive ability (g), but these are far from capturing heritability estimates obtained from twin studies. A major barrier to finding more of this 'missing heritability' is assessment-the use of diverse measures across GWA studies as...

Objective : To investigate associations between major life events and prognosis independent of treatment type: 1) after adjusting for clinical prognostic factors and socio-demographics; 2) among patients with depressive episodes at least six-months long; and 3) patients with a first life-time depressive episode. Methods : Six RCTs of adults seekin...

Background Anxiety and depressive disorders can be chronic and disabling. Although there are effective treatments, only a fraction of those impaired receive treatment. Predictors of treatment-seeking and treatment receipt could be informative for initiatives aiming to tackle the burden of untreated anxiety and depression. Aims To investigate socio...

The requirement for large sample sizes for psychiatric genetic analyses necessitates novel approaches to derive cases. Anxiety and depression show substantial genetic overlap and share pharmacological treatments. Data on prescribed medication could be effective for inferring case status when other indicators of mental health are unavailable. We inv...

Background Understanding and improving outcomes for people with anxiety or depression often requires large sample sizes. To increase participation and reduce costs, such research is typically unable to utilise “gold-standard” methods to ascertain diagnoses, instead relying on remote, self-report measures. Aims Assess the comparability of remote di...

Importance Most previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of depression have used data from individuals of European descent. This limits the understanding of the underlying biology of depression and raises questions about the transferability of findings between populations. Objective To investigate the genetics of depression among individual...

Background Generalized anxiety and depression are extremely prevalent and debilitating. There is evidence for age and sex variability in symptoms of depression, but despite comorbidity it is unclear whether this extends to anxiety symptomatology. Studies using questionnaire sum scores typically fail to address this phenotypic complexity. Method We...

Background One goal of the DNA revolution is to predict problems in order to prevent them. We tested here if the prediction of behaviour problems from genome‐wide polygenic scores (GPS) can be improved by creating composites across ages and across raters and by using a multi‐GPS approach that includes GPS for adult psychiatric disorders as well as...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

More than 50% of individuals with an eating disorder (ED) will readmit to treatment within 6 months of treatment discharge and often due to persistent cognitive ED pathology. Interventions addressing unremitted cognitive ED pathology following discharge from intensive treatment are crucial to prevent readmission. Imaginal exposure therapy facilitat...

Despite the observed associations between psychiatric disorders and nutrient intake, genetic studies are limited. We examined whether polygenic scores for psychiatric disorders are associated with nutrient intake in UK Biobank (N = 163,619) using linear mixed models. We found polygenic scores for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar di...

Background Parental criticism is correlated with internalising symptoms in adolescent offspring. This correlation could in part reflect their genetic relatedness, if the same genes influence behaviours in both parents and offspring. We use a Children‐of‐Twins design to assess whether parent‐reported criticism and offspring internalising symptoms re...

Depression, conduct, and hyperactivity symptoms are chronic and frequently co-occur in adolescence. Common genetic and environmental vulnerability to these conditions have previously been demonstrated, however, the manner in which common versus disorder-specific etiological influences operate across development and maintain symptom co-occurrence is...

Background Reported trauma is associated with differences in the course and outcomes of depression and anxiety. However, no research has explored the association between reported trauma and patterns of clinically relevant symptoms of both depression and anxiety. Methods We used network analysis to investigate associations between reported trauma a...

Anorexia nervosa is characterized by anxiety-driven behaviors, such as food avoidance and distressing persistent thoughts about weight gain and body image. The present study used a classical fear conditioning procedure to test the processes of fear acquisition and generalization, extinction, and renewal in patients with anorexia nervosa and healthy...

Background Shame is considered a maladaptive self‐conscious emotion that commonly co‐occurs alongside depression and anxiety. Little is known, however, about the aetiology of shame and its associations with depression and anxiety. We estimated, for the first time, genetic and environmental influences on shame and on its associations with depression...

Background: Evidence suggests that retrospective self-reports of childhood trauma are associated with a greater risk of psychopathology in adulthood than are prospective measures. However, it remains unclear why retrospectively reported trauma confers a greater risk for poor outcomes. Investigating the heritable characteristics and environmental ad...

Aims To determine whether age, gender and marital status are associated with prognosis for adults with depression who sought treatment in primary care. Methods Medline, Embase, PsycINFO and Cochrane Central were searched from inception to 1st December 2020 for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of adults seeking treatment for depression from thei...

Objectives Evidence for a genetic influence on psychological treatment outcome so far has been inconsistent, likely due to the focus on candidate genes and the heterogeneity of the disorders treated. Using polygenic risk scores (PRS) in homogenous patient samples may increase the chance of detecting genetic influences. Methods A sample of 342 phob...

Background This study aimed to develop, validate and compare the performance of models predicting post-treatment outcomes for depressed adults based on pre-treatment data. Methods Individual patient data from all six eligible randomised controlled trials were used to develop ( k = 3, n = 1722) and test ( k = 3, n = 918) nine models. Predictors inc...