By Milenna T. van Dijk, Eleanor Murphy, Jonathan E. Posner, et al., JAMA Psychiatry, April 21, 2021
Key Points
Question Does having multiple prior generations affected by depression increase risk of psychopathology in children, and can it be reliably measured in large, diverse samples using informant-reported family history?
Findings In this secondary analysis of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study including 11 200 children from 9462 families, the highest risks of depressive and other psychiatric disorders were found in children with 2 depression-affected generations compared with those with 1 or no affected generations. This pattern held across sex, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity.
Meaning In this study, family history methods across 3 generations were associated with increased psychiatric risk in offspring and may enable selection of homogenous samples for genetic and biological studies as well as development of screening tools in applied mental health settings.
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