Depression, anxiety sickly victim of panic attacks? And if you were to blame your parents for letting you inherit these problems? According to a recent study, children whose parents suffer from depression are more likely to develop the same type of problems in childhood.
Such transmission has been the subject of many studies, but this "inheritance", if confirmed, would better treat adults and especially to identify children at risk.
Mental illnesses are they hereditary?
In may 2000 the outcome of the department of psychiatry at Columbia University wrote down the cases of depression among adolescents and younger children were more frequent when the parents were themselves depressed. But only the occurrence of these disorders, from a very young age, seemed associated with the recurrence or continuation of disease in adulthood.
But all, or only certain psychological conditions, are they transmitted? This question has motivated the work of many psychiatrists. Since 1991 the team of Joseph Biederman speculated that panic attacks and agoraphobia (fear of empty spaces and expanded or otherwise of the crowd) found themselves more easily in the same family as the onset of depression.
Deepening their work, their latest study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry has focused on modes of transmission of these diseases.
A legacy
How to determine predisposition to certain mental illnesses? Inherits does one of the depressive character of his parents? To help answer these questions, the 380 children participating in this study were divided into four groups:
- Those whose parents suffer from depression and panic attacks;
- Those whose parents suffer only from panic attacks;
- Those whose parents suffer from depression only;
- Those whose parents suffer from any of these disorders.
In comparing these samples, the psychiatrists at Massachusetts General Hospital have found slight differences:
- The panic attacks and agoraphobia trends of parents are correlated with the same type of problems in children.
- Major depression seem to involve parents in their offspring at high risk of social phobia, major disturbances of behavior and sociability and the development of depression. These children were nine times more likely to be faced with major depression than those whose parents have no trouble.
- If parents combine depression and panic attacks, children are more likely to develop anxiety attacks of various types.
These discoveries provide additional funds to the hypothesis that the predisposition to anxiety affects several members of one family. However, further studies on larger samples are needed to confirm these trends and identify factors that may cause the maintenance of these disorders in adulthood. According to the authors, this information will be useful to identify early children at risk for the best deal.
But we must keep in mind that a single factor is insufficient to trigger depression. If the inheritance of this disorder seems to be confirmed today, do not neglect to take into account environmental factors.
