Early-childhood temperament trajectories map onto transdiagnostic psychiatric risk

Mol Psychiatry. 2026 Sep 11. doi: 10.1038/s41380-026-03881-0. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Early-childhood temperament is associated with later mental health. Temperament continues to develop throughout the first years of life, and a single assessment cannot capture its trajectory. Whether departures from an individual’s developmental trajectory carry psychiatric risk remains unknown. Using data from more than 50,000 children in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study, we modeled longitudinal temperament at 1.5, 3, and 5 years of age with the FEMA-Long mixed-effects framework. We then quantified each child’s departures from their predicted trajectories. Multivariate analysis revealed two transdiagnostic dimensions linking trajectory departures to psychiatric diagnoses across childhood and adolescence. Higher scores on the first dimension were associated with an increased hazard of subsequent ADHD diagnosis (hazard ratio = 1.54), and higher scores on the second with an increased hazard of Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio = 1.64). To examine the genetic basis of these associations, we performed longitudinal GWAS of temperament and conjunctional FDR analysis to detect loci shared with the associated diagnoses. The effects of these loci changed across early childhood, with some strengthening and others attenuating with age. These findings show that departures from predicted temperament trajectories reflect transdiagnostic psychiatric risk with a shared genetic basis. Longitudinal, trajectory-based monitoring could help identify children at elevated psychiatric risk.

PMID:42728316 | DOI:10.1038/s41380-026-03881-0