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Suicide attempts and suicides have long been known to run in families, but questions remain about the genetic versus environmental contributions to these phenomena. Investigators used Swedish national registry data on all individuals born in Sweden in 1960 to 1990 to examine the occurrence of suicide attempts and suicide deaths in biological and adoptive offspring of parents who themselves attempted or died by suicide.
The investigators looked at all combinations of suicide attempts and deaths across four types of families: intact nuclear families (n=2,175,259); families where the biological fathers never lived with the children or nearby (n=152,436); families with stepfathers (n=73,785); and families of adoptees, including both their biolog…