Background: The concept of differential susceptibility has challenged the potential meaning of personal traits such as poor ability to regulate emotions. Under the traditional model of diathesis/stress, personal characteristics such as liability to angry outbursts are seen as essentially disadvantageous, emerging under duress in a way that is…

Objective: Maternal antenatal anxiety is associated with an increased risk of behavioral disturbances in offspring. Recent work has suggested that the effect of maternal antenatal anxiety on infant temperament at 6 months is moderated by the serotonin transporter polymorphism 5-HTTLPR, with carriers of the short allele more susceptible to the…

Background: Parenting programs have been shown to work when delivered to motivated ethnic majority parents in demonstration projects, but comparatively little is known about their impact when delivered to high-risk, multi-ethnic populations by routine local services. Methods: The Primary Age Learning Skills (PALS) trial was a randomized controlled…

Background: To investigate the association between normative repetitive routines of childhood and paediatric obsessive compulsive symptom syndrome (OCSS) and the extent to which it is genetically mediated. Methods: In a two-phase design a community sample of 4,662 6-year-old twin-pairs were sampled and 854 pairs were assessed in the second phase…

Background: Depression in fathers in the postnatal period is associated with an increased risk of behavioural problems in their offspring, particularly for boys. The aim of this study was to examine for differential effects of depression in fathers on children's subsequent psychological functioning via a natural experiment comparing prenatal and…