Having at least one parent with major depression increases a child’s risk of depression, substance abuse and anxiety disorders in later adolescence and early adulthood, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany. Their surveys of 2,427 German youths, aged 14 to 24 years, and their parents show that 42 per cent of the mothers and 23 per cent of the fathers were either diagnosed with major depression or had experienced at least one depressive episode. A follow-up survey, three-and-a-half years after the first, shows that nearly one in five children had experienced at least one episode of major depression and about four per cent had symptoms of lifetime dysthymia, a milder, chronic form of depression.
(Reuters 18/04/02)

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