You've probably heard more than once that opposites literally attract each other. Especially when it comes to the very characters who hate each other - screenwriters, for example, are very fond of creating movie plots based on this assumption. However, reality paints a completely different picture - according to research published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, genetic similarity can determine who your partner is, especially if your partner and you have a common mental disorder.
Genetic similarity and mental illness
The study involved 707,263 Swedish citizens. All subjects had at least one mental illness: ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and others. The study also looked at people with physical ailments - diabetes, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and so on. Five healthy subjects were used as a control group per person suffering from a physical or mental illness.
The researchers then tracked the romantic relationship between the subjects over 18 months. It turned out that people with mental disorders were more likely to choose someone with a mental disorder as their partner. Not much more often partners shared a similar illness. In the meantime, these results do not mean that if partners have the same mental disorder, then they are compatible. According to Wired, in the past, few studies have examined partner correlation at the diagnostic level. In addition, the research methods were based on small samples of volunteers and their stories about themselves.
The researchers warn that the results of their work should not be taken literally.
Since many Swedish couples live together rather than get married, the study focused on people who were either married or had children. As the researchers write in their work, having a child was almost the only viable way to determine whether couples are truly "compatible." Given that the research is focused on people with genetically related mental disorders, the psychiatric future of these children is indeed an interesting topic for future research.
Either way, the authors hope that the findings will help clarify the pathways of transmission of mental disorders from parent to child and enable carers to better cope with these often obscure conditions.
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Lyubov Sokovikova