Dec. 22, 2008 Earthquakes have aftershocks — not just the
geological kind but the mental kind as well. Just like veterans
of war, earthquake survivors can experience post-traumatic
stress disorder, depression and anxiety. In 1988, a massive
earthquake in Armenia killed 17,000 people and destroyed nearly
half the town of Gumri. Now, in the first multigenerational
study of its kind, UCLA researchers studying survivors of that
catastrophe have discovered that vulnerability to PTSD, anxiety
and depression runs in families. Armen Goenjian, a research
psychiatrist in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and
Biobehavioral Sciences, and colleagues studied 200 participants
from 12 multigenerational families exposed to the earthquake.
Participants suffered from varying degrees of the disorders. The
researchers found that 41 percent of the variation of PTSD
symptoms was due to genetic factors and that 61 percent of the
variation of depressive symptoms and 66 percent of anxiety
symptoms were attributable to genetics. Furthe