Study looks at influence of father's depression on his children

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDNov 8 2011

There have been numerous studies that looked at the effect of mother's depression upon her children. But there have been no studies that explore the influence a father's depression on his children.

A study published now is the first of its kind and shows that children who live with a father who has mental health problems and depression have higher rates of behavioral and emotional problems themselves.

The study authors looked at a nationally representative sample of almost 22,000 children over four years. The researchers used two separate questionnaires to record the overall mental health and depression symptoms of the parents. These questionnaires were used only for screening purposes, the study notes, and were not equivalent to the official symptom checklists doctors use to diagnose depression.

The team, led by Dr Michael Weitzman at NYU's Langone Medical Center, found that 11 per cent of children with depressed fathers had behavioral and emotional problems. For children without depressed parents, the figure was just six per cent, while for a child of a depressed mother, the number was 19 per cent. Indeed, at 25 per cent, the figures spiked for children or two depressed parents.

One in ten American adults has depression, which can be treated and is known to run in families. It is believed that a parents' depression affects the way he or she interacts with a child, in turn contributing to a child's behavior.

Speaking about the results, Dr Weitzman told Good Morning America that the study is “remarkable” because it is the first of its kind. “I think fathers are under-recognized in terms of the impact they have in families and in children's lives,” he explained. “It behooves us to try and devise clinical services that would identify fathers that are depressed and figure out ways to link them to services…The same things that make parents excited about their kids when they feel good can exacerbate their depression when they're unhappy… One can only postulate that treating the parents could have a positive effect on their children,” Dr Weitzman told the news programme.

Alan Kazdin, professor of psychology and director of Yale's Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic, told GMA, “One of the best things you can do for your children is maintain your physical and mental health. It's nice to see we're getting away from just bashing moms,” he said, encouraging parents with depression to “go get treatment. It will make a difference in how you interact with your child.”

“This opens the door to a vast array of answerable but currently unanswered questions about the health and development of children growing up in households with depressed fathers,” said Dr. Weitzman.

Weitzman said, or depressed parents might make kids depressed. Another possibility is that depressed kids make parents depressed. If the link is directly from parents to kids, some possible reasons could include the inability of depressed parents “to respond to a child's requests and needs in a consistently reliable and empathic manner,” said Dr. Rahil Briggs, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Depressed parents may also struggle to help their children regulate their own emotions, which may lead to poor social emotional development.”

Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, said the findings are “consciousness-raising” because they point to how depressed males don't necessarily suffer in isolation. “They remind us that when you're working with depressed adult males you have to remember to ask, 'Are they a parent? Who's watching out for the kids?'”

The idea that parents have an impact on their children's mental health is a “no-brainer,” said Michael Brody, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Child Psychiatry and a visiting professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, in College Park, Maryland. Genes often play a role in passing depression and other mental-health problems from parent to offspring, Brody said, and the family environment is also important. “We learn how to adapt to situations by looking at our parents as models,” he says. “So if either parent is depressed, a kid is going to be influenced by this.”

Limitations of this study include only sampling households with both mother and father present, and using scales and questionnaires rather than diagnostic psychiatric interviews to assess for symptoms, making it difficult to generalize the results and stopping short of identifying specific emotional or behavioral problems in the children sampled.

The study appears online and in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics.