Elsevier

Psychiatry Research

Volume 32, Issue 2, May 1990, Pages 191-199
Psychiatry Research

Interrelationships among anxiety, aggression, impulsivity, and mood: A serotonergically linked cluster?

https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-1781(90)90086-KGet rights and content

Abstract

Serotonin abnormalities appear to be related to a variety of psychopathological dimensions such as anxiety, depressed mood, impulsivity, and aggression dysregulation. We hypothesized that the psychopathological dimensions related to serotonin would be significantly intercorrelated since they seem to have a common biological basis. Sixty psychiatric inpatients were examined on a series of psychometric tests measuring suicidality, violence potential, impulsivity, depressive mood, and anxiety. The scores on all of these measures tended to be significantly correlated with one another. These findings support the additional hypothesis that biological markers may be more closely related to basic psychological dimensions than to nosological categories.

References (44)

  • H.M. van Praag

    CSF 5HIAA and suicide in non-depressed schizophrenics

    Lancet

    (1983)
  • H.M. van Praag et al.

    Denosologization of biological psychiatry or the specificity of 5-HT disturbances in psychiatric disorders

    Journal of Affective Disorders

    (1987)
  • J. Zohar et al.

    Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Psychobiological approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and pathophysiology

    Biological Psychiatry

    (1987)
  • American Psychiatric Association

    DSM-III-R: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

    (1987)
  • M. Åsberg et al.

    5HIAA in cerebrospinal fluid: A biochemical suicide predictor?

    Archives of General Psychiatry

    (1976)
  • C.M. Banki et al.

    Biochemical markers in suicidal patients: Investigations with cerebrospinal fluid amine metabolites and neuroendocrine tests

    Journal of Affective Disorders

    (1984)
  • G.L. Brown et al.

    Human aggression and suicide

    Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior

    (1986)
  • G.L. Brown et al.

    Human aggression and suicide: Their relationship to neuropsychiatric diagnoses and serotonin metabolism

  • D.S. Charney et al.

    Monoamine receptor function in affective disorders

  • R. Farmer

    Hostility and deliberate self-poisoning: The role of depression

    British Journal of Psychiatry

    (1987)
  • L. Lidberg et al.

    Homicide, suicide and CSF 5HIAA

    Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica

    (1985)
  • M. Linnoila et al.

    Low cerebrospinal fluid 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid concentration differentiates impulsive from nonimpulsive violent behavior

    Life Sciences

    (1982)
  • Cited by (198)

    • Sex-biased transcriptomic response of the reproductive axis to stress

      2018, Hormones and Behavior
      Citation Excerpt :

      Much like the pattern observed in the hypothalami of males as compared to females, the male pituitary also had less differential gene expression than the female pituitary. For example, genes that increased in expression in the male pituitary in response to stress include Nuclear receptor subfamily 4 group A member 3 (NR4A3) (logFC -2.9, FDR 5.3e-10), which has been implicated in mechanisms related to feeding behavior and energy balance (Kim et al., 2013; Nonogaki et al., 2009), and 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor 3A (HTR3A) (logFC −1.9, 4.42e-05), a receptor whose ligand (serotonin) is widely accepted to be involved in mood disorder and anxiety (Apter et al., 1990; Bagdy, 1998; Millan, 2003; Nonogaki et al., 2009). A signal of cell-cycle arrest may be evident, as the gene CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP), delta, know to be involved in preventing the cell cycle from continuing through the G1 phase (Johnson, 2005) increased in expression in response to stress (logFC −2.6, FDR 3.1e-09).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text