Depression and Anxiety Bulletin

January 2026

The latest Depression & Anxiety Bulletin from Mersey Care Evidence and Library Service is ready for you to view at https://www.evidentlybetter.org/depression-anxiety/2026/01/20-january-2026/

In this edition:

  • Resilience and its external determinants: cross-sectional survey and network analysis of parenting, trauma and stress in college students
  • Childhood adversities and post-traumatic stress: predictive pathways through acute stress disorder
  • Mental health impacts of sexual violence in older adults: a qualitative study
  • Is depression a cause or consequence? Using genetics to untangle causal relationships
  • Plus much more

Nature not nurture to blame for OCD, research claims

Research published in JAMA Psychiatry has suggested Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is transmitted from parent to child mostly through genetics and not the way a child is raised.

The population register–based study found OCD was transmitted from parents to children largely through a genetic relationship, while rearing appeared to play a minor role. OCD and anxiety disorders were moderately genetically correlated, with the genetic correlation being strongest between OCD and generalized anxiety disorder, intermediate with social phobia and weakest for panic disorder.