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Broader Psychopathology Comorbidity May Fuel Transmission of Conditions to Offspring
The intergenerational transmission of psychiatric conditions appears to be mostly attributable to broader psychopathology comorbidity than specific conditions, suggest study results published in JAMA Network Open.
“Professionals who work with children (eg, child psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and social workers) might benefit from taking the total number of parental psychiatric conditions into account, regardless of type, when forecasting child mental health and social functions,” wrote corresponding author Mengping Zhou, MSc, of the Karolinska Institutet Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Stockholm, Sweden, and coauthors.
The study, which included 2.9 million people born between 1970 and 2000 from the Swedish national register and followed up through 2013, estimated associations between general and specific psychopathology factors in parents and 31 different outcomes in their offspring. The outcomes were categorized into the following 6 groups: psychotic-like outcomes, neurodevelopmental outcomes, internalizing outcomes, externalizing outcomes, behavior and accidents, and psychosocial outcomes.
The general psychopathology factor in parents was significantly associated with all 31 outcomes in offspring, according to the study. Children whose parents were 1 standard deviation above the mean for general psychopathology factor had between 8% to 40% higher odds of the various outcomes. Odds ratios ranged from 1.08 for accidents to 1.40 for social welfare recipiency.
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Meanwhile, the specific psychotic factor in parents was linked with all 5 psychotic-like outcomes in offspring. Odds ratios ranged from 1.05 for antiepileptic prescription to 1.25 for schizophrenia, the study showed. Similarly, the specific internalizing factor in parents was associated with all 6 internalizing and all 6 neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring, and the specific externalizing factor in parents was associated with all 6 externalizing and all 6 internalizing outcomes in offspring.
“This cohort study of the Swedish population suggests that the intergenerational transmission of psychiatric conditions across different types of spectra may largely be attributable to a parental general psychopathology factor,” researchers from concluded, “whereas specific factors appeared to be primarily responsible for within-spectrum associations between parents and their offspring.”
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