Psychische und körperliche Erkrankungen gehen oft Hand in Hand. Eine genetische Studie erklärt, warum. Schizophrenie ging häufig mit Magen-Darm-Problemen einher; Eine bipolare Störung ging tendenziell mit Störungen des Urogenitalsystems und Schlafstörungen einher. Depressionen und Angstzustände gingen tendenziell mit Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen einher.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69218-1
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For centuries, mental illness and physical disease have been viewed as two distinct categories, each with its own field of study, its own doctors, and its own menu of treatments.
New CU Boulder research calls that age-old dichotomy into question, showing that the same chunks of DNA that underly psychiatric disorders like depression, PTSD and ADHD are associated with risk of a host of physical ailments, too.
The study of nearly two million people, published in the journal Nature Communications, sheds light on just how often, and why, psychiatric and physical diseases go hand in hand. It could ultimately pave the way for new therapies that address both, the authors said.
Andrew Grotzinger
Andrew Grotzinger
“The surprising finding here is not that psychiatric disorders and medical disorders are linked, but rather, how much they are linked,” said senior author Andrew Grotzinger, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. “At the genetic level, we found that there is so much overlap they are really not two different classes of diseases at all.”
Diseases come in pairs
Grotzinger’s previous research has shown that people with one psychiatric disorder often have many (41% meet the criteria of four or more), likely due to shared genetic factors. Physical disorders also come in groups, with 38% of the global population having two or more chronic conditions.
Only recently have scientists begun to explore how often physical and psychiatric disorders coincide. One recent study, looking at medical records of Danish citizens, found that having a mental health disorder boosted risk of a physical disease by 37%, with some psychiatric disorders increasing risk of some physical disorders by nearly 400%. People with depression, studies show, are 1.5 times as likely as those without depression to develop heart disease.
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2026/04/08/mental-physical-illnesses-often-go-hand-hand-genetic-study-explains-why
Yeah, we know. We’ve been saying this for at least the ten years I’ve been reading r/science.
In fact, most people don’t use the expression „mental illness“ anymore because we know it’s not really a thing, and we know that psychiatry and psychology were useful 20th-century bandaids while researchers developed the tools for neurology, genetics, biology, and chemistry to identify the actual causes of the conditions we used to call „mental“.
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Two words: [mast cells](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354625001061).
I have treatment-resistant IBS and stress-induced psychosis so this really tracks for me
I started taking Adderall for my ADHD and my Cyclothymia went away. Around the same time I started taking a beta blocker for my heart and blood pressure problems, and then my anxiety virtually vanished. Obviously this is anecdotal, but having prescriptions that balanced my physical symptoms vastly improved my mental health and made it so much easier to deal with my ptsd issues. I really wish my gp doctors had listened to me before, as it would have likely saved me several years of suffering through those mental health issues.
People often forget that the brain is an organ, and mental heath problems can be the same as physical health problems. If the brain isn’t firing off synapses or firing to many of another, it’s going to cause physical problems that also affect how you feel. Emotional and physical health are rarely unconnected, and it’s important to find health professionals that will take the entire body into account to treat the root of the issue and not just symptoms that pop up.