Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Now, more than a decade into the genome-wide association study (GWAS) era, continued progress in genomic discovery for psychiatric traits is easily taken for granted. The winning formula of large-scale collaborative science, uncompromising methodological rigor, and brute force sample size accumulation has become well established, and its regular empirical returns have become progressively less headline-making. However, we should not be complacent. As the results of the systematic review by Akingbuwa et al.1 in this issue of the Journal make clear, accumulating the necessary numbers of genotyped cases to identify the majority of common risk variants remains a daunting and distant prospect for many psychiatric traits relevant to children and adolescents. But more than this, the challenge of providing clinically and societally meaningful returns on the considerable investments of the GWAS era will require a continued and concerted research effort well into the future.

Editorial: Developmental Psychiatric Genetic Epidemiology: Where Are We, and What Challenges Do We Face Going Forward?