Recently, 3 reports that shed further light on the short- and long-term mental health consequences for children of depressed parents were published.
The first study focused on children of mothers who were depressed.1 The mothers, who were participants in the sequenced treatment alternatives to relieve depression (STAR*D) multisite trial, had a current diagnosis of major depressive disorder and at least 1 child aged 7 to 17 years. A total of 151 mother-child pairs from primary care and psychiatric outpatient clinics were included in the study.
The mothers' mean age was 37 years. The ethnicity of the sample was as follows: white, 44%; black, 37%; Hispanic, 15%; and other, 4%. Forty-two percent of the mothers were married and 58% were single, divorced, or separated. A majority of the mothers (65%) were employed outside the home. Eighty-six percent of the mothers had completed a high school education or had obtained a college- or graduate-level education. Twenty-nine percent of the mothers were receiving public assistance.
The mothers were clinically rated to have severe (72%) or moderate (28%) depression. With regard to the children's demographic characteristics, the mean age was 11.5 years, and 48% of the sample were girls.
Approximately one third (34%) of the children of the depressed mothers were found to have a current psychiatric disorder, including disruptive behavior (22%), anxiety (16%), and depressive (10%) disorders. The children's lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders was 45% and similarly included disruptive behavior (29%), anxiety (20%), and depressive (19%) disorders.
The children's risk of having a depressive or anxiety disorder increased 3-fold if the mother had atypical depressive features. The risk of a child having a depressive disorder also increased substantially (3- to 8-fold) when the mother had a history of suicide attempts and concurrent comorbid panic disorder with agoraphobia. The onset of children's disruptive behavior and anxiety disorders tended to be before age 12. Slightly more than half of depressive disorders in children were diagnosed before adolescence.
Comorbid disorders were also common among children of depressed mothers. For example, 40% of the children with a depressive disorder had an anxiety disorder, and 58% of the children with an anxiety disorder had a disruptive behavior disorder.
The researchers in this study also conducted an investigation to determine whether treating the mothers who were depressed would reduce psychiatric symptoms in their children.2 They found that it was necessary for the mother to have at least a 50% response to treatment in order for the researchers to detect any improvement in the children's symptoms. Moreover, the children's diagnoses and symptoms were significantly reduced when their mother's depression remitted after 3 months of medication treatment; there was an 11% decrease in diagnoses for these children. However, there was an 8% increase in the rate of psychiatric diagnoses in children with mothers whose depression did not remit after treatment.
