The Functioning of Offspring of Depressed Parents: Current Status, Unresolved Issues, and Future Directions

Abstract

Although the intergenerational transmission of risk for depression is well documented, the mechanisms and moderators involved in this transmission of risk from depressed parents to their offspring are not clear. In this review, we discuss the progress that has been made over the past two decades in studying offspring of depressed parents and describe the maladaptive characteristics of these offspring in a diverse range of domains, including clinical, cognitive, and biological functioning. Despite recent advances in this area, there are unresolved questions that warrant further investigation involving the nature of risk transmission from parent to offspring, the specificity of findings to depression, and the role of factors that often accompany depression. We discuss these issues and offer directions for future research that we believe will move the field forward in gaining a better understanding of the relation between parental depression and altered psychobiological functioning in their offspring. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 5 is December 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Early-Pregnancy Resilience Characteristics before versus during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…During pregnancy and the first year postpartum, herein referred to as the 'perinatal' period, people were uniquely vulnerable to the negative effects of the pandemic, and multiple studies have identified worsening mental health among those delivering during the pandemic [2][3][4] . Mental health conditions are already the most common pregnancy-related complication, impacting up to one in five pregnant people, 5 and are associated with long and short term maternal morbidity, 6,7 as well as impaired maternal-child attachment 8,9 .…”