Frances Rice

TL;DR: Maternal smoking during pregnancy appears to show an association with offspring ADHD symptoms that is additional to the effects of genes and not attributable to shared rater effects, clinical referral biases, or covariation with antisocial behavior.

TL;DR: Twin studies show that depressive symptoms in young people are heritable although rater and measurement issues are important and adoption studies show little evidence for a genetic influence on depressive symptoms.

TL;DR: In this paper, a prenatal cross-fostering design where pregnant mothers are related or unrelated to their child as a result of in vitro fertilization (IVF) was used to disentangle maternally inherited and environmental influences.

TL;DR: In this paper, a "natural experiment" design that separates prenatal environmental from alternative inherited effects was used to test causal hypotheses with genetically sensitive designs, showing that if maternal smoking in pregnancy has true risk effects, association will be observed with ADHD regardless of whether mother and offspring are related or unrelated.

TL;DR: Maternal smoking during pregnancy is a risk factor for ADHD behaviour and diagnoses, although the mechanisms through which such risks work is unknown.