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

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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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    Accepted October 16, 2001.

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

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