The current study investigated whether transdiagnostic factors, negative emotionality and behavioral control, account for the covariation between MDD and AUD. Consistent with prior work, results suggest that both risk factors account for a statistically significant proportion of the covariation between MDD and AUD (Ellingson et al. 2015). Further, nearly all of the covariation explained by control was due to genetic factors, and negative emotionality explained the covariation via genetic and environmental factors. These findings are of particular interest with regard to NIMH’s RDoC initiative, which involves ‘shifting the central research focus of the field away from clinical description to more squarely examine aberrant mechanisms. RDoC first aims to identify reliable and valid psychological and biological mechanisms and their disruptions, with an eventual goal of understanding how anomalies in these mechanisms drive psychiatric symptoms’ (p. 631, Sanislow et al. 2010). As outlined by the RDoC proposal, the trait measures of negative emotionality and behavioral control used in the current study map onto the negative valence (e.g. potential threat) and cognitive (e.g. cognitive/effortful control) systems, respectively (Morris & Cuthbert, 2012).
