Nearly 60 percent of children whose parents and grandparents suffered from depression have a psychiatric disorder before they reach their early teens, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). This is more than double the number of children (approx. 28 percent) who develop such disorders with no family history of depression.
The study, published in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, is the first to follow three generations of high-risk families and has taken more than two decades to complete. The CUMC/NYSPI research team began studying 47 first generation family members in 1982; then interviewed 86 of their children several times as they grew into adulthood. The team has collected data from 161 members of the third generation, whose average age is 12.
Results found that most of the prepubescent grandchildren with a two-generation history of depression developed anxiety disorders that developed into depression as they aged into adolescence. This trend was also found when the researchers previously followed the children's parents through adolescence and adulthood.