Isolation and loneliness are related to schizophrenia. A study published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications carried out by the team of Celso Arango, head of the CIBER Mental Health group (CIBERSAM) at the Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health of the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, has identified this link for the first time through genetic studies.
This pioneering study, directed by Javier González Peñas in collaboration with Álvaro Andreu Bernabéu, has also had the collaboration of different CIBERSAM groups that participate in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Their results suggest that there is a shared genetic risk between loneliness and schizophrenia and that this may play a more important role in women than in men. This would support that the subjective experience of social isolation – aggravated by the restrictions of the pandemic – could have more negative consequences in women, including the risk of developing psychosis.
Pandemic loneliness and risk of onset of mental disorders
The CIBERSAM researchers have used a sample of 3,488 people (1,927 with schizophrenia and 1,561 healthy controls) to demonstrate the genetic contribution of loneliness and social isolation to the risk of suffering from schizophrenia. To this end, both objective social isolation (lack of social relationships) and perceived isolation (loneliness, a subjective feeling of anguish associated with the lack of significant relationships, regardless of the amount of social contact) have been studied.
Although isolated people often feel lonely, isolation does not always correlate with feelings of loneliness, although both are risk factors for the onset of mental disorders.
The study points out the importance of loneliness and isolation, both increased by the pandemic, in the development and prognosis of psychotic disorders
As explained by the director of the work, Javier González Peñas, “we subdivided the genetic risk that predisposes to schizophrenia based on its effect on loneliness and isolation, finding that the genetic risk that was common to both schizophrenia and loneliness and isolation was greater in women than in men. Furthermore, this common genetic risk correlates with depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, alcohol dependence, and autism.”
Therefore, according to the first author of the work, Álvaro Andreu Bernabéu, “our results indicate that this shared genetic risk between schizophrenia and loneliness could help us understand the genetic relationships between schizophrenia and other complex psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, major depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
As a whole, as indicated by Celso Arango, who has also actively participated in the study, “these findings open up the possibility of developing interventions against loneliness and isolation for the prevention and improvement of the clinical evolution of spectrum disorders of the schizophrenia, especially after the conditions of social isolation to which we have been forced by the pandemic and confinement.”
Source: CIBERSAM
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