Your friends can push you not only towards bad habits but also towards mental illnesses

Friends are an important part of our lives, who stay with us in our joys and sorrows and share our happiness. But let us tell you that your friends can not only push you towards bad habits but also towards mental illnesses. Research has revealed that under the influence of their genetic traits, you can become a victim of drug addiction and can also suffer from mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.

Research has shown that long-term contact with a friend can lead to the influence of their genetic traits on us as well, and we may suffer from drug and alcohol use disorders, depression, and anxiety.

Jessica E. Salvatore, associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the study, said that genetic predispositions to psychological and narcotic use disorders in friends increase the risk of developing similar disorders in early adolescence. She said that our data are an example of the far-reaching consequences of social genetic influences.

Sociogenomics

is an emerging field that studies the easily observable effects of one person's genotype on another. To test this, Salvatore and his colleagues used national data from Sweden. The database included more than 1.5 million people born in Sweden between 1980 and 1998.

Mapping people

Researchers mapped people by location and school during adolescence and used medical, pharmacy, and legal registries to document substance use and mental health disorders during adolescence. The model assessed whether the likelihood of target individuals experiencing substance use, major depression, and anxiety disorders during adolescence could be predicted based on the genetic predispositions of peers.

What did the research find?

The study also found a clear link between peers' genetic predispositions and the likelihood of narcotics use or mental illness in target individuals, within school groups (the strongest effects were among higher secondary school friends), particularly among 16- to 19-year-olds who pursued business or pre-college studies together.

The social genetic influence of school-based peers was stronger for drug and alcohol use than for depression and anxiety. Salvatore said the analysis found that peer genetic predispositions were associated with the target individuals' likelihood of developing the disorder.