psychiatry

Could Psychiatric Symptoms in Parents Predict Outcomes in Children?

The presence of parental psychiatric symptoms could have a negative impact on their children’s psychopathology and related outcomes, according to new research.

 

These findings emerged from a study of 742 mothers, 440 fathers, and their 811 children at 3 child and adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics.

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Christel Middeldorp, MD, PhD, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues evaluated the occurrence internalizing and externalizing psychiatric symptoms in study participants at baseline and 1.7-year follow-up.

 

In addition, they tested predictions of children’s symptom scores at follow-up based on parental scores at baseline, along with parental scores at follow-up and children’s scores at baseline.

 

Results of the study revealed that symptom scores at both baseline and follow-up were higher among children whose parents’ scores were above the subclinical threshold for psychiatric symptoms. The magnitude of these associations was similar for both mothers and fathers.

 

The strongest predictors of children’s scores at follow-up were:

  • Children’s scores at baseline
  • Parents’ psychiatric symptoms at follow-up

However, parental scores at baseline did not appear to predict their children’s scores at follow-up.

 

“The higher symptom scores at follow-up in children of parents with psychopathology were mainly explained by higher symptom scores at baseline,” the researchers wrote. “The continuing parent-offspring associations may be a result of reciprocal effects, [such as] parental symptoms influencing offspring symptoms as well as of offspring symptoms influencing parental symptoms.

 

“Still, the results show that these children are at risk for persisting symptoms, possibly indicating the need to treat mothers’ and fathers’ psychopathology,” they concluded.

 

—Christina Vogt

 

References:

Wesseldijk LW, Dieleman GC, van Steensel FJA, et al. Do parental psychiatric symptoms predict outcome in children with psychiatric disorders? A naturalistic clinical study [Published online July 17, 2018]. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2018.05.017

 

Listen to our podcast with senior study author, Dr Christel Middeldorp: