Risk of Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Offspring of Parents with Major Depressive Disorder: A Birth Cohort Study.
Yu-Han Lin, Shih-Jen Tsai, Ya-Mei Bai and 2 others
PMID 39088144WHAT IT FOUND
Children of parents with depression were more likely to receive diagnoses of ADHD, autism, tics, and developmental delays.
Prenatal parental depression was linked to more conditions; postnatal depression was linked only to ADHD, developmental delay, and coordination delay. Association, not proof of cause.
Key findings
01Compared with matched controls, children of parents with major depression had higher diagnosed rates of ASD (0.9% vs 0.5%), ADHD (6.5% vs 3.2%), tic disorder (0.9% vs 0.6%), and any developmental delay (6.2% vs 4.4%).
02After adjustment, parental depression was associated with higher offspring risks of ASD (HR 1.52), ADHD (1.98), tic disorder (1.40), any developmental delay (1.32), developmental speech or language disorder (1.17), developmental coordination disorder (1.76), and intellectual disability (1.26).
03Prenatal exposure was associated with ASD, ADHD, tic disorder, any developmental delay, developmental speech or language disorder, and developmental coordination disorder; postnatal exposure was associated only with ADHD, any developmental delay, and developmental coordination disorder.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was retrospective, so it cannot prove that parental depression caused the neurodevelopmental diagnoses. The database included only people who sought medical or mental health care, so parents with depression who did not seek help were counted as controls. Parents with anxiety disorders were not examined, so the study cannot tell whether anxiety adds to the risk. The study excluded parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, so the findings apply only to families without those disorders. Diagnoses depended on coded clinical visits and specialist diagnoses, not on direct research assessment.
Declared interests
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University is named as the funder. The paper gives no other conflict-of-interest statement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that parental depression causes neurodevelopmental disorders or that treating it will prevent them. This was a retrospective cohort study, and it only compared diagnosed rates between groups; it did not test an intervention or establish cause.
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