Cited by 52Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentMaternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and PostpartumFamily Support in Illness

Psychopathology and functioning among children of treated depressed fathers and mothers

Open access

Abstract

Objective Recent findings suggest that remissions of maternal depression are associated with decrease in offspring psychopathology. Little is known about the offspring effects of decrease in paternal depression.Method The offspring of married fathers and married mothers were compared. The analysis was restricted to married parents to control for the confounding effect of single parenthood which was more prevalent among depressed mothers. At baseline all parents met criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD), and participated in a 3 month randomized controlled trial to treat depression with a 6 month follow-up. Married parents (N=43) and their children aged 7-17 years (N=78) were assessed independently through direct interviews of children and parents at baseline and followed for 9 months. Child assessors were blind to the clinical status of parents and uninvolved in their treatment.Results At baseline, children of depressed fathers, compared to children of depressed mothers, had significantly fewer psychiatric disorders (11% vs. 37%; p=0.012) and less impairment as measured by the Columbia Impairment Scale (6.5 vs. 11.6; p=0.009). Over time, with treatment of parental depression, the prevalence of most child symptoms decreased among children of depressed mothers, but changed little among children of depressed fathers.Limitations The main limitation of the study is the small number of fathers and their offspring included in the study.Conclusion Maternal as compared to paternal depression had a greater impact on children. With treatment of parental depression the differential prevalence of child symptoms by parental gender narrowed over time. The clinical implication is that children may benefit from treatment of their depressed parents.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.jad.2014.04.012

Cites

34 of 34 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 35 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Bird HR Andrews H Schwab-Stone M Goodman S Dulcan M Richters J Rubio-Stipec M Moore RE Chiang PH Hoven C Canino G Fisher P Gould MS 1996 Global measures of impairment for epidemiologic and clinical use with children and adolescents International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 6 295 307
  2. Pleck JH Masciadrelli BP 2004 Paternal Involvement by U S Residential Fathers: Levels, Sources, and Consequences, The role of the father in child development 4 John Wiley & Sons Inc US, Hoboken, NJ 222 271

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Pilowsky, D. J., Wickramaratne, P., Poh, E., Hernandez, M., Batten, L. A., Flament, M. F., Stewart, J. W., Blier, P., & Weissman, M. M.
Affiliations
  • New York State Psychiatric Institute (US)
  • Institute of Mental Health Research (CA)
Corresponding author
Pilowsky, Daniel J.
Venue
Journal of Affective Disorders
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2014-08
Volume
164
Pages
107-111
ISSN
0165-0327 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1965209506
Cited by
51
References
35
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 2
FWCI
8.26
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Journal of Affective Disorders (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Columbia Academic Commons (Columbia University)
Funders
  • Parental Remission of Depression and Child Psychopathology (MMW, PI) (MH082255)
  • JWS, PI (MH076961-01A2)
  • PB, PI (MH077285-01A2)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Family Support in Illness
Keywords
parental depression, child psychopathology, paternal depression, maternal depression, major depressive disorder, depression treatment, child functioning, impairment, offspring of depressed parents, gender differences
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Child, Major Depressive Disorder, Fathers, Female, Humans, Male, Mothers, Psychopathology, Child of Impaired Parents

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review