Finally, it is possible that some genetically influenced outcomes of interest to prevention scientists are not currently the focus of extant gene identification efforts. For example, prevention scientists might be interested in including an index of genetic risk for self-regulation or emotion-regulation. However, most large-scale gene identification efforts focus on diagnosable psychiatric outcomes (hence the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium). Accordingly, GPS for outcomes such as depression will have to serve as proxies for genetic predispositions to actual constructs of interest, such as emotion regulation (with the assumption that part of the genetic predisposition to depression likely involves mechanisms related to emotion regulation). Maher et al. (2016) in this issue make a compelling case for the importance of pursuing genes involved in resistance as a complement to the identification of risk genes. Psychiatric genetics has focused nearly exclusively on finding genes involved in why people develop disorders; studying why some people are particularly likely to remain unaffected would likely be extremely beneficial in helping us understand health-related outcomes as well.
