Parents’ depression may impact their children’s mental health ─Study

*Experts say educational development is impacted when parents struggle with mental health

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Researchers from Swansea University, in a fresh study, explored how parents’ mental health can impact their children.

The study findings indicated that children are more likely to experience mental health problems and not perform as well in school when parents struggle with depression.

The researchers wrote: “Children who live with a parent (mum or dad) who has depression are more likely to also develop depression and not achieve as well in school, compared to children who live with a parent with treated depression.

“Working with families and treating parental depression (in dads as well as mums) is likely to have long-term benefits for children’s mental health and educational attainment. This has never been more important than after lockdown and COVID, as depression is contagious too.”

In investigating the family impact of depression for the study, the researchers analysed data from infants enrolled in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) database who were born between 1987 and 2018.

The team looked at the participants’ and parents’ medical records to determine the long-term impacts of mental health outcomes, agency report stated.

The researchers also learned that having a parent who was depressed was linked with two important risk factors: a higher risk of children developing depression and a higher risk of not meeting academic milestones.

The study further showed that young girls were more likely than young boys to develop depression based on their parents’ mental health outcomes.

This risk remained high regardless of which parent was struggling with depression.

From an academic standpoint, children were less likely to pass academic assessments at the end of elementary school when they lived with depressed parents.

Going forward, however, the team hopes these findings help identify families who may be in need of mental health resources that could greatly benefit both parents and children.

The experts further stated: “This finding suggests that working closely with families where depression (particularly chronic depression) is present in either parent and treating parental depression to remission is likely to have long-term benefits for children’s mental health and educational alignment.”