A key goal of psychiatric epidemiology is to identify causal risk factors for psychiatric disorders that, when modified through an intervention, will lower incidence of disease and decrease burdens of symptoms in patients with the disease. Observational studies have identified several potential risk factors that are associated with mental illness, but identifying those that are causal rather than associated is challenging because of confounding, selection bias, reverse causation, or pleiotropy (ie, a single gene may influence multiple unrelated phenotypic traits).

中文翻译：

---

通过2样本孟德尔随机化推断精神病学-从联想到因果关系？

精神病流行病学的主要目标是确定精神病的因果风险因素，这些因素经干预后可以降低疾病的发生率并减轻疾病患者的症状负担。观察性研究已经确定了与精神疾病相关的几种潜在危险因素，但是由于混杂，选择偏见，反向因果关系或多效性（即，单个基因可能影响多个不相关的表型性状），因此确定具有因果关系而不是相关因素是具有挑战性的。 ）。