Article Review

Posted: December 21st, 2022

Article Review

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Article Review

This review critiques the article by Jami et al. (2021), which was published in the Translational Psychiatry journal. The article is titled “Parental characteristics and offspring mental health and related outcomes: A systematic review of genetically informative literature”, highlighting its focus on the nature-nurture complexity of mental disease development (Jami et al., 2021). The critical review focuses on the research type, hypotheses and findings summary, methodology and sampling, and the strengths and limitations of the reported study.

Description of the Research Type Used

The researchers in this study performed qualitative research. A qualitative systematic review of existing literature addressing the gene-environment correlation to help explain the mental health outcomes based on parental characteristics was conducted. The qualitative nature of the study focused on creating meanings from the qualitative data presented by the selected sources. Similarly, the systematic review overviewed the primary studies that had been published and were related to the gene-environment correlation explaining how parental characteristics helped predict the propensity for developing mental illnesses among offsprings. In this regard, rather than interacting with study participants directly, this research approach enabled the researcher to collate the qualitative data from high-quality primary studies that addressed the phenomenon of interests, which is the correlation between parental genes and environment in predicting the development of mental health disorders in their offsprings. This approach enabled the researchers to access a large body of data and evidence without spending much time and resources, while following an elaborate, unambiguous, concise, and reproducible methodology.

Hypothesis and Summary of its Findings

The researchers hypothesized that since parents contributed 50% of their genes to their children, genetically-informative study designs were critical for unraveling the critical role of genes and the environment in explaining the mental health outcomes of their children. This hypothesis was predicated on the assumption that parents’ characteristics had a genetic and environmental component that predetermined the likelihood of offspring developing mental health challenges. This hypothesis was informed by the misinterpretation of the mechanisms that underlie the parent-child association in the development of disease in offsprings. The main findings of this study are first, parental psychological characteristics and parenting behaviors influence the development of problem internalizing and externalizing through environmental mechanisms, thus affecting personality development, substance abuse, and academic achievement in children, provided the genetic effects were accounted for in the analysis. Secondly, genetic nurture explained the children’s problems internalizing tendencies and academic performance. This means that parents pass on their characteristics to their offsprings through overlapping genetic and environmental pathways. These findings confirmed the nature and nurture influence on the disease development process.

Critique of the Methods and Sample Used

The study employed a systematic survey of high-quality studies evidencing the correlation between genetic and environmental factors of parents that predetermine the likelihood of developing mental health disorders in their offsprings. The systematic review approach utilizes a systematic approach of selecting appropriate sources based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. It involves systematically searching evidence from primary sources addressing the phenomenon of interest, which in this case is the influence of parental characteristics on the development of mental health disorders in children. This methodology is preferred because of its ability to reduce bias by selecting primary studies systematically, enhanced reproducibility and replicability due to methodology transparency, and its rigorous nature compared to other review types. However, systematic reviews are time-consuming compared to other review types and may introduce bias by including what is termed as grey literature. Therefore, the researchers opted for scientific articles authored in reputable peer-reviewed journals to avoid these pitfalls.

The sampling process was procedural and involved the initial identification of relevant sources before they were screened and their eligibility assessed, after which those that met the preset criteria were included in the study. In this case, out of the 2097 studies that were initially identified from the Web of Science database, 89 sources published between 2014 and 2020 were finally included.

Evaluation of Strengths and Weaknesses

This study has several notable strengths. Firstly, the study used a systematic review approach, which helped access large quantities of high-quality and amount of primary data with minimal resource expenditure. Secondly, the study used peer-reviewed primary studies that were analyzed systematically, thus eradicating the bias associated with qualitative studies. Thirdly, the study addressed a topic that challenges many researchers because of the ambiguity and inconclusiveness of the findings resented by methodological and interpretational difficulties. However, the significant weaknesses of this study included the reliance on secondary sources that reviewed findings that the researchers could not verify. The researchers had to rely upon the peer-review process in reputable journals to authenticate the quality of research and data contained therein. Besides, the study addressed a few mental health challenges, thus requiring more extensive future studies to be undertaken to decipher the fuller extent of the influence of parental characteristics on the offsprings’ mental health.   

Conclusion

This study focused on the methodological challenges influencing the nature-nurture studies of disease development. The study reiterated the pertinence of genetically-informed research designs to elaborate and elucidate the link between nature and nurture in disease development. Nonetheless, this study made a significant contribution to a problematic yet pertinent research area.  

References

Jami, E. S., Hammerschlag, A. R., Bartels, M., & Middeldorp, C. M. (2021). Parental characteristics and offspring mental health and related outcomes: A systematic review of genetically informative literature. Translational Psychiatry, 11(1), 1-38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01300-2