Family Discord, Parental Depression, and Psychopathology in Offspring: Ten-Year Follow-up

doi:10.1097/00004583-200204000-00012

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Volume 41, Issue 4, April 2002, Pages 402-409

https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200204000-00012 Get rights and content

ABSTRACT

Objective

To determine the independent effects of parental depression and family discord on psychopathology in offspring at high and low risk for major depression.

Method

One hundred eighty-two offspring of depressed or nondepressed parents were followed over 10 years. In direct interviews, parents’ and offspring's psychopathology was evaluated by raters blind to parents’ clinical status. Five dimensions of family discord—poor marital adjustment, parent–child discord, low family cohesion, affectionless control, and parental divorce—were assessed.

Results

Offspring exposed to either parental depression or family discord had higher rates of psychopathology than their counterparts. High-risk offspring had few family discord measures associated with their psychopathology; in low-risk offspring, family discord was associated with all offspring diagnoses. Between the two risk factors, parental depression proved a more important predictor for offspring major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorder, whereas family discord was a more important predictor for substance use disorder.

Conclusions

Parental depression is a strong and consistent risk factor for offspring MDD and anxiety disorder. Without parental depression, offspring have less exposure to family discord and lower rates of psychopathology. In the presence of family discord, rates of MDD, anxiety disorder and substance use disorder increased. When offspring matured into young adulthood, effects of parental depression and family discord persisted.

Section snippets

SAMPLE

Subjects were parents and their offspring who participated in a 10-year follow-up study of offspring at high and low risk for depression. An extensive description of the design and sample assessment has been published elsewhere (Weissman et al., 1982, Weissman et al., 1986, Weissman et al., 1987, Weissman et al., 1997). The depressed parents (probands) originally were selected from a treatment setting at the Yale University Depression Research Unit. The normal control subjects came from a 1975

Family Discord in Offspring by Parental Depression Status

Of the 182 offspring, 96 were boys and 86 were girls. The mean age at time 10 was 27.7 years. There were no significant differences in the age and sex distribution of offspring and social class by parents’ diagnostic status. Compared with offspring of nondepressed parents, offspring of depressed were more likely to be exposed to poor marital adjustment (OR = 13.1, p = .004), low family cohesion (OR = 2.2, p = .03), parental divorce (OR = 5.5, p = .01), and affectionless control (OR = 2.4, p =

DISCUSSION

Our findings at the 10-year follow-up were consistent with findings at the 2-year follow-up (Fendrich et al., 1990). However, the magnitude of the association was even stronger at the 10-year follow-up. This might be due to the older age of the offspring at time 10 (mean age 28 versus 18 years) and the fact that sufficient time had elapsed to capture the full emergence of MDD and substance use disorder in offspring. These 10-year finding also suggest that the effects of both family discord and

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Few studies to date have characterized functional connectivity (FC) within emotion and reward networks in relation to family dynamics in youth at high familial risk for bipolar disorder (HR-BD) and major depressive disorder (HR-MDD) relative to low-risk youth (LR). Such characterization may advance our understanding of the neural underpinnings of mood disorders and lead to more effective interventions.
A total of 139 youth (43 HR-BD, 46 HR-MDD, and 50 LR) aged 12.9 ± 2.7 years were longitudinally followed for 4.5 ± 2.4 years. We characterized differences in striatolimbic FC that distinguished between HR-BD, HR-MDD, and LR and between resilience and conversion to psychopathology. We then examined whether risk status moderated FC–family dynamic associations. Finally, we examined whether baseline between-group FC differences predicted resilence versus conversion to psychopathology.
HR-BD had greater amygdala–middle frontal gyrus and dorsal striatum–middle frontal gyrus FC relative to HR-MDD and LR, and HR-MDD had lower amygdala–fusiform gyrus and dorsal striatum–precentral gyrus FC relative to HR-BD and LR (voxel-level p < .001, cluster-level false discovery rate–corrected p < .05). Resilient youth had greater amygdala–orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum–dorsal anterior cingulate cortex FC relative to youth with conversion to psychopathology (voxel-level p < .001, cluster-level false discovery rate–corrected p < .05). Greater family rigidity was inversely associated with amygdala–fusiform gyrus FC across all groups (false discovery rate–corrected p = .017), with a moderating effect of bipolar risk status (HR-BD vs. HR-MDD p < .001; HR-BD vs. LR p = .005). Baseline FC differences did not predict resilence versus conversion to psychopathology.
Findings represent neural signatures of risk and resilience in emotion and reward processing networks in youth at familial risk for mood disorders that may be targets for novel interventions tailored to the family context.
Impacts of multilevel factors on depressive symptoms among adolescents in South Korea
2020, Children and Youth Services Review
Citation Excerpt :
The evidence that family factors play key roles in the problem of adolescent depression is strong (Restifo & Bögels, 2009). Previous studies have identified the following factors as contributing to adolescent depression: family relationships including high discord, low cohesion, and high affectionless control (Nomura, Wickramaratne, Warner, Mufson, & Weissman, 2002), poor parental support (Stice, Ragan, & Randall, 2004), family conflict (Kane & Garber, 2004; Sander & McCarty, 2005), and the experience of neglect (Nadeau et al., 2013; Yoo & Chung, 2014). Moreover, researchers have generated substantial evidence that child abuse and neglect markedly increase the risk of major psychiatric disorders, such as major depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance/alcohol abuse (Nemeroff, 2016).
In this study, we used the social-ecological model to identify factors associated with the adolescents’ depressive symptoms. We utilized data from the 6th year of the Korea Youth Panel Survey, which followed 4th year elementary school students nationwide from 2010 to 2016, and annual average PM2.5 data measured in each city/county/district throughout the country in 2015 by the Korea Meteorological Administration. Using multilevel analysis, we analyzed a total of 1,204 students in 57 communities. The null model analysis results identified regional differences in adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Regarding individual and social factors at level 1, the conditional model analysis showed that gender, parental abuse, and negative relationships with teachers and peers had statistically significant associations with adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Regarding community factors at level 2, it showed that more positive community awareness was related to lower levels of depressive symptoms among adolescents. In contrast, the analysis showed that adolescents living in communities with high levels of Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 were more depressed. Based on these results, we recommend the provision of programs to improve relationships between parents, teachers, friends, and adolescents, and the implementation of intervention strategies to enhance community awareness and reduce air pollution to prevent and decrease adolescents’ depressive symptoms.
Depression in Medically Ill Children and Adolescents
2019, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America
The role of religiosity in families at high-risk for depression
2019, Ethics, Medicine and Public Health
About 40 years ago we began a study of the offspring of depressed (high-risk) and not depressed (low-risk) parents, matched for age and gender, from the same community. We interviewed all of their biological children, blind to the clinical status of the parents. Over the years, we returned to re-interview the families at baseline, 2, 10, 20, 25, 30, and 35 years. As the years went by and the sample grew up, we also interviewed the third generation, the grandchildren. As technology became available, we included measures of electrophysiology and magnetic resonance imaging in order to better understand the mechanisms of risk. At the 10-year follow up, we included measures of religion and spirituality – namely, personal religious/spiritual importance and frequency of religious service attendance. We included these measures in all subsequent waves including a more extensive follow up of religious beliefs at the 35-year follow up.
This paper describes the study design and highlights the key findings of the role of religious/spiritual belief in the transmission and endurance of depression using clinical and biological approaches.
We describe study findings based on clinical measures, as well as physiological measures that employed electrophysiology and magnetic resonance imaging.
Taken together, the findings suggest that religiosity/spirituality is protective against depression in high-risk individuals at both clinical and physiological levels.
The findings suggest religiosity interacts with both culture and biology in its impact on depression.
Il y a environ quarante ans, nous avons entrepris une étude sur la progéniture de parents déprimés (à risque élevé) et non déprimés (à faible risque), appariés par âge et par sexe, et de la même communauté. Nous avons interrogé tous leurs enfants biologiques, ignorant l’état clinique des parents. Au fil des ans, nous avons réinterrogé les familles lors des années 2, 10, 20, 25, 30 et 35. Avec le passage des années et la croissance de l’échantillon, nous avons également interrogé la troisième génération, les petits-enfants. Avec l’introduction de nouvelles technologies, nous avons aussi inclus des mesures d’électrophysiologie et d’imagerie par résonance magnétique afin de mieux comprendre les mécanismes de risque. Lors du suivi de 10 ans, nous avons inclus des mesures sur la religion et la spiritualité, c’est-à-dire l’importance personnelle de la religion/spiritualité et la fréquence de présence à des services religieux. Nous avons inclus ces mesures dans tous les suivis ultérieurs, notamment un suivi plus approfondi sur les croyances religieuses au terme de 35 ans.
Ce document décrit la conception de l’étude et met en évidence les principales conclusions concernant le rôle des croyances religieuses/spirituelles dans la transmission et la persévérance de la dépression à l’aide d’approches cliniques et biologiques.
Nous décrivons les résultats des études basées sur des mesures cliniques, ainsi que des mesures physiologiques utilisant l’électrophysiologie et l’imagerie par résonance magnétique.
L’ensemble des résultats suggère que la religiosité/spiritualité a un effet protecteur contre la dépression chez les individus à haut risque aux niveaux clinique et physiologique.
Les résultats suggèrent que la religiosité interagit avec la culture et la biologie dans son impact sur la dépression.
Polygenic risk, family cohesion, and adolescent aggression in Mexican American and European American families: Developmental pathways to alcohol use
2018, Development and Psychopathology
The effect of parent–adolescent discrepancies in reports of familial dysfunction and depression on suicidal ideation in adolescents
2024, Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior

View all citing articles on Scopus

Accepted October 16, 2001.

This research was supported by NIMH grant MH36197 (Dr. Weissman).

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ARTICLESFamily Discord, Parental Depression, and Psychopathology in Offspring: Ten-Year Follow-up

ABSTRACT

Objective

Method

Results

Conclusions

Section snippets

SAMPLE

Family Discord in Offspring by Parental Depression Status

DISCUSSION

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry

Adv Behav Ther Res

J Affect Disord

J Psychiatr Res

J Affect Disord

The effect of the family on the emotional life of Ethiopian immigrant adolescents in boarding schools in Israel

Residential Treat Child Youth

Expressed emotion, parenting stress, and adjustment in mothers of young children with behavior problems

J Child Psychol Psychiatry

Level of social cognitive development, adaptive functioning, and DSM-III diagnoses in adolescent offspring of parents with affective disorders: implications of the development of the capacity for mutuality

Dev Psychol

Children of affectively ill parents: a review of the past 10 years

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry

On the variances of asymptotically normal estimators from complex surveys

Int Stat Rev

Children of depressed parents: an integrative review

Psychol Bull

A diagnostic interview: the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia

Arch Gen Psychiatry

Family risk factors, parental depression, and psychopathology in offspring

Dev Psychol

Maternal depressive symptoms and depressive symptoms in adolescents

J Child Psychol Psychiatry

ARTICLES
Family Discord, Parental Depression, and Psychopathology in Offspring: Ten-Year Follow-up