Psychiatr News January 18, 2008
Volume 43, Number 2, page 30
© 2008 American Psychiatric Association
National Registry Quantifies Family Depression Risk
Joan Arehart-Treichel
A study based on the population of Sweden covering a 15-year period
finds an age-specific familial risk for depression, with the highest risk in
young women who have two depressed parents.
Even during their Viking days, the Scandinavians tended to keep very
good records. Keeping with that tradition, researchers in Sweden have
harnessed various population databases to learn more about the familial
transmission of depression.
Specifically, all men and women born in Sweden from 1932 on have been
registered, together with their parents, in its Multigeneration Register.
Moreover, the government started recording, as of 1987, complete data on all
hospital discharges for depression in Sweden in the Swedish Hospital Discharge
Register. So Xinjun Li, M.D., Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institute in Huddinge,
Sweden, and coworkers used both the Multigeneration Register and Swedish
Hospital Discharge Register data from 1987 to 2004 to determine which Swedes
had been hospitalized for depression between 1987 and 2004, and which had one
or more parents who had also been hospitalized for depression during the same
period. They then used that information to calculate familial risks of
depression during the period.
For example, if individuals had one affected parent, their chance of being
hospitalized for depression as well was about three times greater than that of
individuals with unaffected parents. When a male had two affected parents, his
risk of being hospitalized for depression was five times greater than that of
males with unaffected parents. When a female had two affected parents, her
risk of being hospitalized was seven times greater than that of females with
unaffected parents. But the greatest risks of all were noted for males and
females aged 15 to 29 with two affected parents. The risk was eight times
greater for males and 11 times greater for
females.
Li and his coworkers also determined that depression risk in men with an
affected mother was similar to that in men with an affected father, but that
the risk in women with an affected mother was greater than the risk in women
with an affected father.
Finally, the researchers compared age-specific incidence rates of
depression in Swedes according to their parental history of depression. All
age-specific incidence rates were higher in those who had one or more affected
parents than they were in those with unaffected ones. And while the incidence
rate of depression in Swedes with unaffected parents gradually increased with
age, the incidence rate of depression in those with affected ones shot up
between ages 15 and 20, took another small upward turn between ages 40 and 44,
and rose even higher after age 60.
So all in all, there seems to be a strong familial impact on depression
risk, and even on age-specific depression risk, Li and his team concluded in
their study report, which is in press with the Journal of Psychiatric
Research. Why this is the case is not clear, they admitted.
"It could be assumed that it is due to a genetic basis for
depression. However, it is also possible that depression running in families
is due to children learning depressive strategies from their parents."
Such strategies might be negative cognitions or dysfunctional behaviors, they
speculated.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Swedish
Research Council, and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social
Research.
An abstract of "Age-Specific Familial Risks of Depression: A
Nation-Wide Epidemiological Study From Sweden" can be accessed at
<www.sciencedirect.com>
by clicking on "J" under "Browse by Title," then
"Journal of Psychiatric Research." 
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American Psychiatric Association.
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