Anxiety delivered Direct-to-Consumer: are we asking the right questions about the impacts of DTC genetic testing?

Contrarily to initial expectations about the psychological impact of Direct to Consumer genetic testing, people are substantially resilient to long-term consequences of results to genetic testing. Previous literature raised concerns on DTC focusing on anxiety levels it might cause. We claim that there are three substantial limits to be considered: non-clinical anxiety is not a negative outcome; anxiety is limitedly predictive of health related behaviors and decisions; a number of previous studies are affected by methodological errors. We promote the exploration of complex cognitive and emotional mechanisms to capture the subtle and multifaceted nature of a living-at-risk situation. (By Dr. Serena Oliveri, http://jmg.bmj.com/content/early/2016/09/19/jmedgenet-2016-104184 )