Childhood psychopathology traits are complex, being affected by a large number of genetic variants, each with a small effect. They are also associated with a number of other phenotypes, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric (Meinzer et al., 2013, Erickson et al., 2016). These associations may be explained by different mechanisms, e.g. shared biological pathways or pleiotropy, where the same genetic variant(s) influence multiple phenotypes. Either way, polygenic risk scores (PRS) – aggregate scores reflecting an individual’s liability for a trait based on multiple genetic variants – can, and have been used to investigate these associations (Nivard et al., 2017, Stergiakouli et al., 2017, Jansen et al., 2018). When PRS of one trait significantly predict another, we can conclude that the traits are genetically correlated.

Polygenic risk scores have been used to show genetic associations between childhood psychopathology and a range of adult traits including psychiatric disorders like major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia, functional outcomes like educational attainment, and other psychopathology related traits including insomnia, neuroticism, subjective wellbeing, and BMI, which are generally stable over age. However, it is unknown what the patterns of correlations or associations between adult traits and childhood psychopathology are and how they contribute to the associations between them, as well as the developmental trajectories of these associations. Taking a multivariate approach, we hope to understand the patterns of correlation/association between our traits of interest as well as investigate which adult traits show the biggest contribution to the association with childhood psychopathology.