MVP is very informative for depression and related traits with several available measures, so we considered several different diagnosis definitions (Table 1), as follows. In the MVP, we considered (1) an ICD code-based algorithm to determine depression case status based upon diagnosis codes captured in the VA electronic health records (MDD), (2) self-reported diagnosis of depression as reported in the MVP Baseline Survey (SR-Depression), and (3) the 2 item PHQ scale of depressive symptoms in the past 2 weeks, included in the MVP Baseline Survey (depressive symptoms). Genetic correlations between these traits were high (rg 0.81–1.07). We consider the first of these -- MDD-META -- to be our “primary” analysis based on the larger explained heritability and sample size.
