Background: Maternal depression increases the risk for psychiatric morbidity in offspring but the effects of paternal depression and family type are less studied.
Methods: We assessed the effects of parental antidepressant use on offspring psychiatric morbidity in various family settings.
Results: Our register-based study followed 132637 children for incident psychiatric morbidity in 1998-2003. The highest risk for psychiatric morbidity was in children living with both parents on antidepressants or with a lone parent on antidepressants. We found little variation in the effects according to parental or offspring gender.
Conclusions: Parental depression as measured by antidepressant use, and single parenthood pose a risk for psychiatric morbidity in offspring.
Keywords: EPIDEMIOLOGY; MATERNAL & CHILD CG; MENTAL HEALTH.