The Heritability of Gender Identity Disorder in a Child and Adolescent Twin Sample

Authors: Coolidge F.L.¹; Thede L.L.²; Young S.E.³

Source: Behavior Genetics, Volume 32, Number 4, July 2002 , pp. 251-257(7)

Publisher: Springer

Abstract:

The heritability and prevalence of the gender identity disorder (GID) was examined, as well as its comorbidity with separation anxiety and depression, in a nonretrospective study of child and adolescent twins. The parents of 314 twins (ages 4–17 years; 96 monozygotic pairs [MZ] and 61 dizygotic [DZ] pairs) completed the Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory (CPNI) containing a six-item DSM-IV-based GID scale. Prevalence of clinically significant GID symptomatology in the twin sample was estimated to be 2.3%. Univariate model fitting analyses were conducted using an ordinal transformation of the GID scale. The model that best described the data included a significant additive genetic component accounting for 62% of the variance and a nonshared environmental component accounting for the remaining 38% of the variance. Results suggested no heterogeneity in the parameter estimates resulting from age. The correlation between GID and depression was modest, but significant (r = .20; P < .05), whereas the correlation between GID and separation anxiety was nonsignificant (P > .05). Overall, the results support the hypothesis that there is a strong heritable component to GID. The findings may also imply that gender identity may be much less a matter of choice and much more a matter of biology.

Keywords: Gender identity disorder; child and adolescent twins; heritability; nonretrospective design

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Psychology Department, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150, USA; fcoolidg@uccs.edu 2: Psychology Department, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150, USA 3: Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

Publication date: 2002-07-01

• In this: publication
• By this: publisher
• In this Subject: Pathology ,  Psychology ,  Genetics
• By this author: Coolidge F.L. ;  Thede L.L. ;  Young S.E.

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