Mood Disorders in Parents May Increase Risk of Anxiety Disorders in Offspring

Children who have a parent with a mood disorder appear to be at an elevated risk of a several anxiety disorders, suggests areport in theJournal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The findings, which were based on a meta-analysis of 35 studies, suggest that children may be particularly at risk for panic disorder.“Although we know that there is an overall increased risk for anxiety disorder in general among offspring of parents with mood disorders, little is understood about the risks of specific anxiety disorders and whether the risks differ between parental mood disorder subtypes,” wrote lead author En -Nien Tu, M.D., of the University of Oxford and colleagues.To begin to answer these risks, Tu and colleagues sought out peer-reviewed studies that examined the risk of anxiety in the offspring of parents with mood disorders (at-risk group) and the offspring of parents who did not have these conditions (control group). The researchers identified 35 studies that fit their criteria that were published between 1994 and January 2023. Of these, 13 were cross-sectional studies, three were baseline data from cohort studies, and 19 were cohort follow-up studies. The majority of the studies included children under the age of 19 and most of the study participants were White and from high-income Western countries, the authors noted.Anxiety disorders in the analysis included seasonal affective disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social phobia, sp...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: anxiety disorder Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry mood disorder parents phobias seasonal affective disorder Source Type: research