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Rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health issues have risen sharply in recent years, while smartphones and social media platforms have made exposure to distressing events and traumatic experiences almost constant.
Experts have long warned about the potential impact on well-being, but new research suggests that a person's genes could help explain why some individuals develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after trauma while others remain "resilient," a finding that could one day improve prevention, care and treatment.
The study, led by researchers at King's College London, has found that genetic factors may influence how strongly people respond to different types of trauma, particularly experiences that occur during childhood.
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The findings suggest that some genes may increase vulnerability to PTSD following certain traumatic events, although experts stress that genetics alone cannot predict who will develop the condition.
"We know people differ in their response to trauma with the most common response being resilience," Dr. Jonathan Coleman, senior lecturer in statistical genetics at King's and the study's senior author, told Newsweek. "This suggests vulnerability differs between people, and one potential source of that difference is genetics, alongside social support, life experiences, and other non-genetic factors."
Coleman said previous research had identified DNA changes that appear more frequently in people with PTSD, but the new study goes further.
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"It shows the effect of some of those genetic changes seem to be stronger in people who have experienced particular traumatic events," he said. "Right now, the results from our research are a starting point, but knowing who's most at risk is important, and combining insights from genetics and trauma research could really help us to improve how we deliver care to those who need it in the future."
Not Everyone Develops PTSD
PTSD can develop after exposure to traumatic events, but not everyone who experiences trauma goes on to develop the disorder. Symptoms commonly include flashbacks, nightmares and intrusive thoughts, avoidance of reminders associated with the event, and ongoing feelings of stress, panic or fear.
Researchers have long understood that both environmental and genetic factors play a role in determining risk. However, less clear has been whether different kinds of traumatic experiences interact with genetic risk in different ways.
The study, published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, sought to answer that question by examining gene-environment interactions across a wide range of potentially traumatic experiences.
The researchers analyzed mental health and genetic data from 144,702 participants drawn from the U.K. Biobank and three National Institute for Health and Care Research studies.
Participants completed assessments of PTSD symptoms and reported whether they had experienced 11 different forms of trauma during childhood and adulthood.
The childhood experiences included emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect and sexual abuse. Adult traumas included serious accidents, serious illness, sexual assault, violent crime, exposure to war, and witnessing death.
The team examined interactions between trauma and genetic risk at three levels of genetic detail; overall polygenic risk scores, specific genes and individual genetic variants.
Childhood Trauma Stood Out
The researchers found that childhood trauma was more strongly associated with PTSD symptoms than trauma experienced during adulthood. Childhood experiences also showed stronger gene-environment interactions on average, suggesting genetic factors may play a particularly important role in shaping how people respond to adversity early in life.
One of the study's most notable findings was the distinction between abuse and neglect.
While childhood abuse showed the strongest overall association with PTSD symptoms, childhood neglect appeared more likely to interact with genetic risk factors.
Childhood emotional and physical neglect demonstrated greater gene-environment interactions than childhood abuse, indicating that genetics may play a larger role in determining how severely some individuals are affected by neglect.
The researchers also identified several genes that appeared to interact strongly with particular trauma types. Among them was FAM120A, a gene involved in brain processes linked to fear and stress. The study found that FAM120A interacted significantly more strongly with childhood emotional neglect than with any of the other trauma types examined.
Dr. Manuela R. Kouakou, a medical doctor with a Ph.D. in psychiatric genetics and an MSc in neuroscience, said the findings highlight important differences that are often overlooked.
"What's interesting here is that genetic risk for PTSD doesn't seem to play out the same way for every kind of trauma," she told Newsweek. "People with higher genetic risk had a bigger jump in PTSD symptoms after childhood trauma than after things that happened in adulthood."
Kouakou cautioned that the findings should not be interpreted as evidence that neglect is necessarily more damaging than abuse.
"There's a nuance that's easy to miss," she said. "Abuse in childhood had the stronger link to PTSD symptoms overall. With neglect, though, a person's genetics seemed to make more of a difference to how badly they were affected.
"The study is really telling us who might be more vulnerable after neglect."
She also warned against overstating the predictive power of genetics.
"I'd be wary of predicting who'll get PTSD," Kouakou said. "The genetic risk score only explained around 2 percent of the differences in symptoms between people.
"That's worth knowing scientifically, but you couldn't use it to say anything about an individual."
Still, the findings support growing evidence that trauma type matters when studying PTSD risk. Future genetic research should incorporate more detailed information about traumatic experiences, researchers say, rather than treating all trauma as equivalent.
This could improve understanding of PTSD, support more accurate risk prediction and potentially contribute to more personalized prevention strategies in the future.
Kouakou noted one important limitation: participants answered relatively simple questions about traumatic experiences, often many years after they occurred.
"We'll want to see this confirmed with more detailed measures," Kouakou said.
For now, the study provides further evidence that PTSD risk is shaped by a complex interaction between life experiences and biology, and that understanding both may ultimately help researchers better identify and support people who are most vulnerable following trauma.
Reference
Coleman, J. R. I., et al. (2026). Identifying differential interactions of potentially traumatic experiences with genetic risk for posttraumatic stress disorder. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2026.2709319.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Tony Phillips.
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