A Drexel University-led international study of more than 1 million children has found that teens' academic performance can be impacted if their parents ever had depression, even if they were diagnosed before the child was born. 
 
 "I think it's often not realized that mental health issues affect persons beyond [the] immediate patient," said Dr. Brian Lee, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel's School of Public Health. "Persons in the family, especially children, who are going to be more vulnerable, are likely to be at risk as well." 
 
 Researchers had access to an enormous data set encompassing more than 1 million children born in Sweden between 1984 and 1994 as well as their parents' mental health records. Sweden was chosen because it has a universal health care system and keeps meticulous records that are available in anonymized form to health researchers. 
 
 "It would be impossible to do a similar study like this in the U.S. without millions of dollars being invested," Lee noted. 
 
 Scientists at Drexel; the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden; and the University of Bristol in England had access to a register of year-end grades for the nation's 16-year-olds, plus records of whether their parents had been diagnosed with depression. Adopted children were not included in the study, since depression is inheritable. 
 
 Parental depression was found to have an even greater effect on grades than coming from a low-income family. Moreover, no matter how old the children were when their parents were diagnosed, it affected their grades at age 16. 
 
 
 
 "One of the interesting things that we did observe was that even if parental depression occurred before the child was born, that was still associated with school performance when the child was 16," said Lee. 
 
 However, these correlations were not always large enough to be statistically significant. 
 
 "In general, paternal depression and maternal depression in all periods were independently associated with worse school performance, although paternal depression during the postnatal period did not attain statistical significance," researchers wrote in the study, which was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. 
 
 In particular, researchers saw greater effects when the mother was depressed than when the father was depressed, especially if they had a daughter. For example, a girl's final grades were typically 5.1 points lower on a 1-100 scale if her mother had ever been depressed, while a boy's final grades were 3.4 points lower. 
 
 "Maternal depression in the mother seemed to affect girls more than it did boys, in terms of their school performance, whereas for a father's depression, it had an equivalent effect in both girls and boys," said Lee. 
 
 That finding suggests that the mother-daughter relationship is particularly meaningful to a child's development, or that girls more keenly feel the burden of having a parent with mental illness. 
 
 Lee said that the findings fit well with previous research. The large sample size, plus the fact that researchers saw associations between depression and grades no matter when parents were diagnosed, gives very strong evidence to a theory that rings true: "Parental depression affects the child." ||||| “It’s not just new moms who need to be screened for depression,” says pediatrician Craig Garfield, M.D. “Dads are at risk, too.” 
 
 A new Northwestern Medicine study led by Garfield finds depression can hit young fathers hard, with symptoms increasing dramatically during some of the most important years of their children’s lives. 
 
 Depressive symptoms increased on average by 68 percent over the first five years of fatherhood for these young men, who were around 25 years old when they became fathers and who lived in the same home as their children. 
 
 The study, found in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to identify when young fathers are at increased risk of developing depressive symptoms. 
 
 Garfield, associate professor in pediatrics and medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said the results of this longitudinal study are significant and could lead to more effective interventions and treatment for young men early in the fatherhood years. 
 
 “Parental depression has a detrimental effect on kids, especially during those first key years of parent-infant attachment. We need to do a better job of helping young dads transition through that time period.” 
 
 Prior studies have shown depressed dads will use more corporal punishment, read less, and interact less with their children, and are more likely to be stressed and neglect their children. 
 
 Compared to the children of non-depressed dads, these children are at risk for having poor language and reading development and more behavior problems and conduct disorders. 
 
 “We knew paternal depression existed and the detrimental effects it has on children, but we did not know where to focus our energy and our attention until this study,” Garfield said. 
 
 “This is a wakeup call for anyone who knows a young man who has recently become a new father. Be aware of how he is doing during his transition into fatherhood. If he is feeling extreme anxiety or blues, or not able to enjoy things in life as he previously did, encourage him to get help.” 
 
 Researchers analyzed data collected from 10,623 young men enrolled in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and followed them in several waves over nearly 20 years into young adulthood. 
 
 All participants’ symptoms of depression were scored at each wave through a survey using a subset of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. 
 
 During the most recent wave of the Add Health study, the young men were age 24 to 32, and 33 percent had become fathers. 
 
 The majority of these fathers lived in the same home as their children. Young fathers who did not live with their children did not experience such a dramatic increase in depressive symptom scores in early fatherhood, the study found. 
 
 Instead, these non-residential fathers’ depression symptom scores were elevated before fatherhood and start to decrease during early fatherhood, though this sample is smaller in number. 
 
 Residential fathers’ depression symptom scores were lower before fatherhood and then dramatically increased after the birth of a child and into early fatherhood. 
 
 Source: Northwestern University
– Having a depressed parent can take a toll on a child in any number of ways, and a comprehensive new study suggests a tangible one: lower school grades. The study led by researchers at Philadelphia's Drexel University found that kids whose mothers were diagnosed with depression had GPAs about 4.5 points lower than their peers at age 16, while kids with depressed fathers were about 4 points behind, reports NPR. The effect was especially pronounced for daughters whose mothers were depressed, notes Philly Voice: Those teen girls scored 5.1 points lower. The study looked at the grades of more than 1 million students in Sweden and cross-referenced them with their parents' mental health records; Sweden was used because records were easier to assess there. "One of the interesting things that we did observe was that even if parental depression occurred before the child was born, that was still associated with school performance when the child was 16," says Drexel researcher Brian Lee. The researchers don't get into the reasons why parental depression might hurt their kids' grades, though an epidemiologist at Columbia University Medical Center notes that a parent in this situation isn't going to make it to an appointment with a teacher, for instance, or have the energy to talk to their kids about problems in general. "Diagnoses of parental depression may have a far-reaching effect on an important aspect of child development, with implications for future life course outcomes," write the researchers in JAMA. (A TV star shut down his fat shamers by telling his own story of depression.)