The Development of Mental Health Difficulties in Young People With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Gene–Environment Interplay Study Using Polygenic Scores

Abstract

Purpose: Young people with developmental language disorder (DLD) have poorer mental health than those without DLD. However, not all young people with DLD are equally affected; some have more mental health difficulties than others. What explains these differences remains unclear. Method: Data from a community cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, were analyzed to investigate genetic and environmental influences on the development of mental health difficulties at five time points from childhood (7 years) to adolescence (16 years) in 6,387 young people (8.7% with DLD). Regression and latent class models were fitted to the data. Results: Polygenic scores (PGSs), indices of genetic risk, for common psychiatric disorders (major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) predicted mental health difficulties in both groups (with and without DLD). The presence of DLD, in some instances, amplified mental health difficulties for those with high genetic risk for common psychiatric disorders. Subgroups of children with similar developmental trajectories of mental health difficulties were identified. Young people with DLD were more likely than those without DLD to follow mental health subgroups characterized by consistently high levels of difficulties during development. PGSs, socioeconomic status, and the early home environment distinguished subgroups with low mental health difficulties from those characterized by high levels of difficulties, but these effects did not differ based on DLD status. Conclusions: These findings suggest that, for the most part, both genetic and environmental risk affect the development of mental health difficulties in a cumulative way for young people with DLD (and those without). Some analysis did, however, suggest that genetic risk for common psychiatric disorders might manifest more strongly in those with DLD compared with those without DLD. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.22351012

Exploring self-reported quality of life in developmental language disorder

“…Collectively, the current descriptive findings align with studies reporting that nonverbal abilities, socioeconomic status, and health history are factors in quality of life for individuals with DLD (e.g., Conti-Ramsden et al, 2013;McGregor et al, 2023;Toseeb et al, 2023), as well as studies indicating quality of life challenges across physical, emotional, and educational domains (Eadie et al, 2018;Haukedal et al, 2023;Le et al, 2021). A preliminary aim for future research derived from the current findings, when considered alongside prior work, is to test how risk factors in particular quality of life challenges may vary depending on age and environmental demands (e.g., Orrego et al, 2023).…”

Innovative Family-Based Genetically Informed Series of Analyses of Whole-Exome Data Supports Likely Inheritance for Grammar in Children with Specific Language Impairment

“…The current study cross-referenced previously reported candidate genes identified from studies of individuals with SLI and related phenotypes. Similarly, the genes identified from our family-based investigation provide additional targets for future studies of larger cohorts of unrelated individuals, which are the focus of many other groups studying the genetics of language [21][22][23], just as the foundational findings of linkage to chromosome 16q and 19q to SLI have been continually cross-referenced in results from both families and larger and larger cohorts of individuals with language and reading phenotypes [21,36,51,71,72].…”

“…There is continued interest in strengthening our interdisciplinary approaches to speech and language impairments, especially in thinking about how speech-language pathologists can expand and use their knowledge of behavioral genetics in practice [20]. Additionally, there has been a push for utilizing larger cohorts of unrelated individuals and existing medical records for the genetic investigation of language traits [21][22][23]. Significantly, our study relies foremost on the sensitivity and specificity of the TEGI and the genetic relatedness of the participants and the power it may provide to the genetic investigation of SLI.…”

Exploring the Strategies to Empower the Mothers of Adolescent Girls with Hearing Impairment to Deal with their Social and Emotional Problems

“…According to (Limaye, 2008), hearing impairment among adolescent girls complicated the issues such as bodily changes, peer relationships, autonomy, economic independence, marriage, family, and personal identity. The problem in speech and language has a great impact on the mental health (Toseeb, Vincent, Oginni, Asbury, & Newbury, 2023) of such girls that gradually promotes the social challenges while dealing at a wider community level.…”