Nature: Fourteen psychiatric disorders share common roots

December 12, 2025 08:41

A major new genetic study has shown that many psychiatric disorders traditionally considered separate conditions actually share common genetic roots.
The work, conducted by an international team of scientists and analyzing genome-level data from more than 1,056,000 people, was published in Nature and offers a new biological view of mental illness that goes beyond current diagnostic categories.

The researchers examined genetic variants associated with fourteen psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, eating disorders, substance use disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, and Tourette syndrome.

As a result, they identified more than 400 genetic loci that influence several of these disorders at once.

The study revealed five major genetic “factors” that group different disorders according to shared genetic risks. These include: a compulsive-behavior group; a group combining schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; a neurodevelopmental group (such as autism and ADHD); an internalizing group (depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder); and a group related to substance use. Together, these factors explain about two-thirds of the total genetic risk for all fourteen conditions.

The scientists also found certain regions of the genome where many genetic variants simultaneously raise the risk for multiple psychiatric conditions. One such “genetic hotspot” is located on chromosome 11 and is associated with eight of the fourteen disorders studied.

By integrating these genetic data with research on gene activity in the brain, the researchers determined that the most shared genetic signals are linked to fundamental biological processes active during early brain development. Taken together, the findings confirm that psychiatric disorders are often not entirely independent from one another but arise from common biological mechanisms that manifest in different combinations and with varying degrees of severity.

This multidimensional genetic picture represents a step toward revising the classical classification of psychiatric disorders and may ultimately help develop new biologically informed diagnostic and therapeutic approaches that target shared genetic risk pathways rather than individual diseases.

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