Family Disruption in Childhood and Risk of Adult Depression

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The authors examined the risk that family disruption and low socioeconomic status in early childhood confer on the onset of major depression in adulthood. METHOD: Participants were 1,104 offspring of mothers enrolled during pregnancy in the Providence, R.I., site of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project. Measures of childhood family disruption and socioeconomic status were obtained before birth and at age 7. Structured diagnostic interviews were used to assess respondents’ lifetime history of major depressive episode between the ages of 18 and 39. Survival analysis was used to identify childhood risks for depression onset. RESULTS: Parental divorce in early childhood was associated with a higher lifetime risk of depression among subjects whose mothers did not remarry as well as among subjects whose mothers remarried. These effects were more pronounced when accompanied by high levels of parental conflict. Independent of the respondents’ adult socioeconomic status, low socioeconomic status...