Population-Level Implications of Parental Similarity for the Prevalence and Heritability of Psychiatric Disorders.

Partner similarity for psychiatric disorders is substantial in a nationwide Danish cohort, with parental correlations reaching r=0.38 for schizophrenia and r=0.11 for anorexia.

• Why it matters: Assortative mating for psychiatric traits is documented, but its population-level effects on disorder prevalence and family-based heritability have been largely unquantified using real-world data.
• What they did: Using linked Danish registry data for residents born 1969–2017, the study estimated parental correlations for psychiatric and somatic diagnoses and compared observed prevalence and heritability with random-mating simulations.
• The result: Nonrandom mating inflated the prevalence of any psychiatric disorder by 1.8% and its family-based heritability by 12.5%, while somatic correlations were weaker and largely explained by psychiatric comorbidity.

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