Recent findings released in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology establish that people differ considerably in their response to the positive outcomes arising from psychological therapies. Mainly as a result of individual differences in genetic sensitivity.
The team responsible for the findings was directly associated with Queen Mary University of London and Denver University.
According to the research team: “We test in two studies whether the positive effects of the established Prevention and Relationship Education Program (PREP) are moderated by two different polygenic scores (PGS) for environmental sensitivity, one based on nine established candidate genes and one based on several thousand variants across the genome, derived from recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) results.”
The results of the study suggest that people’s sensitivity to the positive outcomes experienced during psychological therapy can be determined by their genes.
A stronger positive response to relationship intervention or other similar psychological therapies was associated with higher genetic sensitivity.
“As we know that not everyone who takes part in relationship programs like the Prevention and Relationship Education Program benefits in the same way, in future it could be helpful to identify people with low sensitivity, that might benefit less from these standard treatments, and potentially offer them an alternative.”
