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Many psychiatric conditions overlap not only in symptoms, but also in genetic risk.

A new study of more than 6 million people mapped shared genetic patterns across 14 disorders.

The findings may eventually help clinicians think more flexibly about diagnosis and treatment.

Why does depression so often arrive with anxiety? Why do trauma symptoms, substance use, and mood problems so frequently become tangled together? For many patients, receiving more than one psychiatric diagnosis can feel confusing and discouraging, leaving them to question if the first diagnosis was wrong or if they're getting worse. But a large new study suggests another possibility: many psychiatric disorders overlap because some of their biological roots overlap, too.

In research published in Nature, the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium’s Cross-Disorder Working Group analyzed genetic data from more than 1 million people with a childhood- or adult-onset psychiatric disorder and about 5 million people without a diagnosis. The researchers examined 14 conditions and found that the diagnoses cluster into broader, partly overlapping families:

Internalizing disorders: major........

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