Fostering strong peer support in youth may help offset depression risk for all youth, even among those who have experienced emotional neglect.Īt least one in five youth in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other developed countries ( 1– 3) experience childhood adversities such as exposure to abuse, neglect, or other major life stressors, which can considerably impact their socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical development, while simultaneously increasing the long-term risk of mental health difficulties ( 4, 5). Conversely, strong peer social support was associated with reduced depressive symptoms, though no significant interaction with emotional neglect was detected.Ĭonclusion: Although childhood emotional neglect is a risk factor for later depression, our results suggest that strong peer social support at age 15 may generally reduce the risk of depressive symptoms by the time children reach late adolescence. Results: Higher levels of emotional neglect were associated with increased depressive symptoms at 18. We analyzed the associations between emotional neglect and depressive symptoms, and between peer support and depressive symptoms, and also tested interactive effects of peer support on the association between emotional neglect and depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms were measured at age 18. Peer social support was measured at age 15. Methods: Childhood emotional neglect, defined as the absence of parental attention and support, was measured across seven assessments from age 8 to 17.5. Analyzing data ( n = 3,265) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) study, a longitudinal birth cohort of children born to pregnant women residing in Avon, UK from 1990 to 1992, we assessed the prospective relationship between childhood emotional neglect and depressive symptoms in late adolescence, and tested whether peer social support in mid-adolescence moderates this relationship. Moreover, few studies have investigated relational protective factors that may offset the risk of depression for children who experienced emotional neglect. However, the specific impact of childhood emotional neglect on later depression has been understudied. Introduction: Childhood adversities have been shown to increase psychopathology risk, including depression. 3Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.2Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.1Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit, Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.Maternal age Offspring depression Parental age Paternal age.Ĭopyright © 2021 The Authors. The results suggest that the age of the parent is etiologically associated with offspring depression. Some data were missing and that could lead to risk estimation biases.ĭiagnosed depression was higher among the offspring of younger and older parents. The study was limited to depression diagnosed by specialised health care services and had a relatively short follow-up period.
#Middle child depression plus#
The highest odds of depression occurred when the fathers were aged 50 plus years (adjusted Odds Ratio (ORa) 1.51, 95% CI 1.23-1.86) and the mothers were under 20 (ORa 1.44, 95% CI 1.29-1.60) compared to the reference category of parents aged 25-29 years. We found a U-shaped association between offspring depression and the age of both parents. The results were adjusted for the parents' psychiatric history, depression history, marital status and place of birth, the mothers' maternal socioeconomic status, smoking during pregnancy and previous births and the children's birth weight. When missing obsevations excluded the sample was N cases=18,708 and N controls=77,243. We also randomly identified 148,795 controls from the Population Register. The subjects were living in Finland at the end of 2012 and had a depressive disorder recorded in the Care Register for Health Care.
This study comprised 37,682 singleton births in Finland from 1987- 2007. Younger and older parental age have been associated with several mental disorders in their offspring, but the associations for depression have been inconsistent. The global prevalence of depression has increased in recent decades and so has the average age of parenthood.
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