The relationship between parental diagnosis, offspring temperament and offspring psychopathology: a longitudinal analysis.
BACKGROUND
The study examines the relationship between child temperament and a diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression as an adult and what influence parent psychopathology may have on the temperament-diagnosis relationship.


METHODS
The sample consists of 151 offspring who were initially selected as being at high or low risk for major depression on the basis of the presence or absence of a lifetime history of MDD in their parents. The parents and offspring were independently interviewed with a modified version of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Lifetime (Mannuzza et al., 1986) and completed a battery of instruments which included the Dimensions of Temperament Survey (Lerner et al., 1982). They were interviewed three times during the course of the study: Time 1, Time 2, and Time 10.


RESULTS
There is a similar distribution of offspring disorders in the same parental diagnostic groups. There is a significant temperamental difference between the offspring of parents with a single disorder in comparison to offspring of parents with comorbid disorder. The former is characterized by significantly greater levels of adaptability/approachability. Low attention span at Time 1 is significantly predictive of an offspring lifetime diagnosis of major depression controlling for ADHD in comparison to offspring with neither disorder. Greater irritability, higher activity level and lower adaptability at Time 1 were significantly predictive of offspring lifetime diagnosis of comorbid disorder in comparison to the MDD only group.


CONCLUSIONS
This is a retrospective cohort study using a temperament measure from Time 1 versus lifetime diagnoses and consisting of a relatively small sample size for several of the diagnostic categories.


CONCLUSIONS
There appears to be a link between parental psychopathology and offspring temperament. The data also provide further support for the notion that comorbid anxiety and depression disorder is a distinct entity in comparison to MDD only and new evidence that it may be predicted by a specific underlying temperament profile.
Mufson
L
L
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University and Division of Clinical-Genetic Epidemiology, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA. mufson1@child.cpmc.columbia.edu
Nomura
Y
Y
Warner
V
V
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000235:genetics; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012307:Risk Factors; D013694:Temperament