Mental disorders and telomere length

There is growing evidence that people who have experienced various mental disorders have shorter telomeres than controls even when taking lifestyle factors into account that can also damage DNA, such as alcohol abuse and cigarette smoking etc.

Depression and telomere lenghth
A Dutch group led by Josine Verhoeven found that telomeres of people who had ever been depressed were significantly shorter (by 83 to 84 base pairs on average) than people who had never suffered from depression. J E Verhoeven, D Révész, E S Epel, J Lin, O M Wolkowitz and B W J H Penninx (2013). Major depressive disorder and accelerated cellular aging: results from a large psychiatric cohort study Mol Psychiatry advance online publication, November 12, 2013; doi:10.1038/mp.2013.151