Approved research

Genetic and Environmental Components of Impulsive Aggression

Lay summary

Impulsive aggressive behavior is present in a proportion of patients with wide a range of psychiatric disorders including depression, schizophrenia, conduct and antisocial personality disorder, resulting in an increased risk of violence, self-harm and other serious physical and psychological consequences. Despite its high heritability, individual genetic factors as well as their interaction with environmental components are poorly understood. Thus we aim to identify genetic risk factors and gene-environment interactions contributing to impulsive aggression. Our aim is to identifying multifaceted genetic and environmental features of impulsive aggressive behavior. Understanding these factors will benefit patients and mental healthcare providers alike by identifying high-risk individuals and inform treatment options to reduce the negative impact of such behavior for patients, family, friends, health care workers and society. We will first identify and investigate environmental components associated with impulsive aggression. Following this we will look for potential genetic factors as well as gene-environment interactions associated with impulsive aggressive behavior. At last we will validate our findings on an independent dataset. We will include all genotyped individuals who completed questions related to their mental health, psychosocial status and cognitive functions.