Various assumptions have been used in the literature to identify natural direct and indirect effects in mediation analysis. a particular causal diagram, then the other set of assumptions will also hold for all models inducing that diagram. We moreover build on prior work concerning a complete graphical identification criterion for covariate adjustment for total effects to provide a complete graphical criterion for using covariate adjustment to identify natural direct and indirect effects. Finally, we show that this criterion is equivalent to the two sets of independence assumptions used previously for mediation analysis. to a node is a path where all arrows connecting nodes on the path point away from and towards to then is called a parent of and a child of has a directed path to then is an ancestor of and a descendant of is both an ancestor and a descendant of to is not a parent of on a path is called a collider if and are parents of and is said to be blocked by a set if either for some non-collider on the path, the middle buy 1431697-85-6 node is in we say is d-separated from given if every path from a node in to a node in is blocked by is not d-separated from given is d-connected to given with a set of nodes with a probability distribution (such that for any disjoint is d-separated from given in is independent from given in and for each is assumed buy 1431697-85-6 to vary according to some (unknown) probability distribution is given by a non-parameteric structural equation = (is an arbitrary function, refers to value assignments to a subset of variables buy 1431697-85-6 in is a value assignment to vary according to a joint distribution for each together inducing a probability distribution in the model. An intervention setting a variable to is represented in NPSEMs by buy 1431697-85-6 replacing the function for by a constant-valued function evaluating to of variables = is the counterfactual value of that would be observed if were set to on on along a particular causal path. For instance, we may want to quantify the causal influence of on not mediated by certain other variables in the model, i.e. the effect of on if some other COL1A1 variables were either held fixed, or were otherwise prevented from transmitting the influence of on denote the counterfactual value of that would be observed if were set to and were set to denote the counterfactual value of that would be observed if were set to to the non-ancestors of is a singleton set. Definition 1 (Controlled direct effect) Given an outcome for some other observable variables, and value settings to all background variables, the controlled direct effect of on not via is given by = and the mediating variables = as indicating a particular individual. If we wish to summarize controlled direct effect over possible values of on unless there are a set of variables that intercepts all direct paths from to (VanderWeele, 2010b). An alternative which avoids this difficulty is to consider the effect of setting to on in a hypothetical situation where all the mediating variables behaved as if were set to a reference value from transmitting the influence of on to all background variables, the natural direct effect of on is given by we would obtain the average natural direct effect in the situation where is set to the reference value vary as if were set to to all background variables, the natural indirect effect of on is given by (and via a randomized experimental protocol, it is then possible to identify controlled direct effect, since the controlled direct effect is a function of interventional distributions. Unfortunately, in practice it is often not possible to randomize treatments of interest. Furthermore, in the case of natural direct effects, there is, in general, no experimental.