PSYCHIATRIC STATUS OF CHILDREN OF DEPRESSED PARENTS

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There is very little research that provides prospective data on the developmental course of offspring of depressed parents. At each of the developmental periods at which we have seen the children (younger child at 2 to 3 years, followed up at 5 to 6 years; older sibling 5 to 8 years, followed up at 8 to 11 years), psychiatric assessments have been made, to be related to parental diagnostic status, family environmental variables, and developmental variables. In analyses to date, we have focused on associations between parental diagnoses and children's psychiatric status. At 2 to 3 years of age, assessments did not differentiate the children by diagnosis of parents. About 10% of the children were rated at risk in the well and in the depressed parent groups. We analyzed the children of middle-class background, who were initially seen as toddlers, at their first follow-up assessment. At this time they manifested problems (DSM-III diagnoses) with different frequencies depending on parental diagnosis, i.e., 15% of the children of well parents, 21% of the children of depressed mothers and well fathers, and 47% of the children of depressed mothers and fathers. When their siblings were seen at 8 to 11 years, the corresponding percentages were 8%, 28%, and 53%. The same data were re-examined in relation to unipolar and bipolar maternal depression. There was little difference in the frequencies of problems in these two groups.