McGowan and his colleagues found that the neuron-specific glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) promoter was hypermethylated in the postmortem hippocampus of suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse compared to those victims without child abuse (McGowan et al., 2009) and increased DNAm of the exon 1F NR3C1 promoter was also observed in the peripheral blood of patients with major depressive disorders (MDD) who suffered ELS (Perroud et al., 2011). Here, NR3C1 is linked to major depressive disorder.