Fabian Streit

Examining the Contribution of Childhood Maltreatment to the Gender Gap in Depression: Insights from the German National Cohort (NAKO) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.26345366v1

We thank all participants of the @nako.de and the many researchers and staff involved.
Special thanks to Aina Kresken and Maja Völker, who led the analyses as part of their Master’s and PhD work 👏

These findings are based on cross-sectional data, and childhood maltreatment was reported retrospectively, which may introduce recall or reporting bias.
Causal interpretations should therefore be made with caution.

Mediation analyses including all five childhood maltreatment subtypes jointly, showed that childhood maltreatment mediated ~19% of the sex difference in lifetime depression and ~30% of the sex difference in current depression, mainly due to sex differences in exposure.

We estimated population attributable fractions (PAFs) to quantify the contribution.
Overall, maltreatment accounted for 26% of lifetime depression and 33% of current depression, with consistently higher contributions in females.
Emotional abuse and emotional neglect showed the largest contributions.

For lifetime depression (physician’s diagnosis), physical abuse and physical neglect showed stronger associations in females, whereas sexual abuse showed a stronger association in males. All maltreatment subtypes were associated with substantially increased odds of depression in both sexes.

We examined five types of childhood maltreatment.
Females reported higher prevalence of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and emotional neglect, with the strongest sex difference for sexual abuse (~9.5% vs 2.5%). Physical abuse was slightly more common in males (~8.3% vs 7.7%).

We analyzed data from 159,045 participants aged 19–72 years from the German National Cohort.
Both lifetime depression (physician’s diagnosis) and current depression (PHQ-9 ≥ 10) were more common in females than in males
(17.7% vs 10.1% and 9.0% vs 5.9%, respectively).

Examining the Contribution of Childhood Maltreatment to the Gender Gap in Depression: Insights from the German National Cohort (NAKO) Background: Childhood maltreatment is a major risk factor for depression and may contribute to sex differences in depression prevalence. We examined sex-specific associations between childhood maltrea...

Happy to share our newest preprint!
Depression is more common in females than in males, but it remains insufficiently understood why.
Using data from the German National Cohort (NAKO) @nako.de, we investigated whether childhood maltreatment may contribute to this gender gap.
doi.org/10.64898/202...

Looking forward to it!

The good judge of intelligence Accurately judging others' intelligence is important, yet little is known about individual differences in this ability. In this study we investigated …

New paper out:
Some people are systematically better at judging others’ intelligence.
Who are the best judges? People WHO are intelligent themselves, have good emotion-perception ability, and who are high in well-being.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I want to thank all researchers involved, including Maja Völker, Carolin Callies, and Stephanie Witt, and all the staff and participants of @nako.de. Looking forward to extend this investigation to the longditudinal data available now, and to other data domains including MRI and genetics!

We observed a clear dose-response relationship: higher daily cigarette consumption correlates with more severe depressive symptoms, while the risk decreases the longer an individual has remained abstinent.

Our analysis reveals that both lifetime and current depression are lowest in never-smokers, highest in current smokers, and intermediate in former smokers.

Happy to share this: we confirmed a significant link between smoking and depression using data from the @nako.de. Our analysis of over 170,000 participants shows that both current and former smokers face a higher lifetime risk of depression. #MentalHealth #ResearchNews #PublicHealth

Link between smoking and depression confirmed in study A research group led by the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) in Mannheim has confirmed for the first time within the German National Cohort (NAKO) an association between cigarette consumption and depression.

Analysis of over 170,000 adults indicates that current and former smokers experience depression more frequently than never-smokers, with risk decreasing the longer a person has quit smoking. doi.org/hbk2gw

Personality Genomics Recent research advances have precipitated the era of personality genomics: the study of how variation in human DNA sequence predicts individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, fee...

A very comprehensive review of the genetics of personlity led by @tedmond.bsky.social This is a great onramp for those who haven't checked into psychiatric genetics or bahviour genetics in a while. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

This is an interesting challenge, Its A LOT of data for psychology, but not for ML perse. I wonder whether there is juice to be squeezed out of other EMA data, which would only have partial feature overlap, loads of other EMA data lives here: openesmdata.org.

‘A fragmented field: Construct and measure proliferation in psychology.’ (2025)

From ‘Language models accurately infer correlations between psychological items and scales from text alone.’ (2025)

From ‘Not within spitting distance: salivary immunoassays of estradiol have subpar validity for predicting cycle phase.’ (2023)

Work in progress with cycle tracking data from the app Clue

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting next year? I'm hiring for a position at the University of Witten/Herdecke.
uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/61280592...

Genome-wide association studies identify 77 loci for suicidality and provide novel biological insights Suicidality is heritable and a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality, yet its biological etiology remains largely elusive. We conducted multi-ancestry genome-wide association study meta-anal...

🚨New preprint from PGC SUI!! @pgcgenetics.bsky.social

GWAS meta-analyses of suicidal ideation, attempt, death, and behavior across >50 cohorts identify 77 loci (59 novel), implicate subcortical brain regions, and show suicidality phenotypes are genetically distinct.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genome-wide analysis of brain age identifies 59 associated loci and unveils relationships with mental and physical health - Nature Aging This genomic study of magnetic resonance imaging-based brain age in 56,348 people identifies 59 genetic loci, links brain aging to mental and physical health, and suggests high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes as causal factors of brain aging.

🧠 Why do some brains age faster than others?
🧬 Our new Nature Aging study of over 56,000 participants explores the genetics of the “brain age gap” — the difference between your brain’s biological and chronological age.
nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00962-7

Thread below 👇

Breaking the Norm: Population-Scale Normative Modeling of Brain Structure in Depression and Anxiety https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.25336528v1

Breaking the Norm: Population-Scale Normative Modeling of Brain Structure in Depression and Anxiety | medRxiv www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genome-wide association study of borderline personality disorder identifies 11 loci and highlights shared risk with mental and somatic disorders We conducted the largest genome-wide meta-analysis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) to date, with a discovery sample of 12,339 cases and 1,041,717 controls, and a replication study of 685 case...

An updated preprint of our Borderline Personality Disorder GWAS is now online:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

The field of neuroscience views the goal of human genetics as "finding genes". This is an outdated view. In whole genome studies of rare variants, finding genes is the easy part. The more interesting and important goal is to map out the causal pathway from genes to brain function to cognitive traits

Got prov. approval for 2 major grants in Neuro-AI & Dynamical Systems Reconstruction, on learning & inference in non-stationary environments, out-of-domain generalization, and DS foundation models. To all AI/math/DS enthusiasts: Expect job announcements (PhD/PostDoc) soon! Feel free to get in touch.

Genome-wide Association Study Identifies SORCS3 as a Novel Susceptibility Locus for Panic Disorder in the FinnGen Study Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder with poorly understood etiology. Although twin studies suggest modest heritability (∼40%), few genetic variants have been associated with it. We carried out a gen...

I’m excited to share our genetic study on panic disorder in the FinnGen sample. We found a genomewide significant hit within the SORCS3 gene and showed that SORCS3 serum protein levels were 40% higher in panic disorder patients compared to controls medrxiv.org/cgi/content/...

#ctglab is hiring! We have #vacancies! 2 PhD & 2 postdoc positions, in #statistical #genetics and/or #bioinformatics - if you like GWAS, method development and linking with biology - check these out 👇

werkenbij.vu.nl/vacatures/tw...

werkenbij.vu.nl/vacatures/po...

werkenbij.vu.nl/vacatures/po...

Great to see this paper finally online, and happy we could contribute (a bit) to it! It's a big progress in regard to variant discovery (especially for the other 4 Big 5) but Ted and team also ran a wide range of super interesting follow-up analyses, that showcase the potential of the results. 🥳🧬

We are currently looking for new collaborators with genotyping and autism data in order to increase our sample size for our next large-scale genome-wide meta-analyses of autism. Want to contribute? Contact us! 📩

pgc.unc.edu/for-research...