Moms pass depression onto their children

A new study on depression looked at the link between mothers who suffered from this disorder and psychiatric problems in their children. It was shown that women who get treatment and manage to go into remission can decrease the incidence of their children suffering from the same disorder or even prevent it.

The research included 151 mother-child pair. The age of children was ranging from 7 to 17. All mothers were on the depression treatment and at the beginning of the study 1/3 of the children suffered from a form of a psychiatric disorder.
Three months after the study, 1/3 of mothers managed to get better and their children showed 11% decrease in psychiatric diagnoses. However, children of the mothers who failed to get better saw an 8% rise in diagnoses.
The researchers will look at the mothers’ progression and their children’s diagnoses every three months for the next two years. It was concluded that mothers’ progress had a very positive influence on children and that they actually positively influenced on each other.