There appears to be a link between a mother who suffers from depression while her children are in the lower grades and their likelihood of engaging in risky behavior when they are teens. These risky behaviors include drinking and smoking and these teens appear to be more likely to start those behaviors earlier in adolescence than other teens.
This finding is from a Canadian study that followed 2,910 children in that country from the time they were toddlers in 1994. The young Canadians were part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, a Canadian population study that ended in 2009. Each year, their mothers were questioned about their own physical and mental health and that of their children and partners, as well as about how well their family functioned and their available social support. The children themselves answered questions when they reached age 10 or so.
Teens that had mothers who showed depressive symptoms during middle childhood were more likely to drink, smoke tobacco or marijuana, and engage in violence and nonviolent delinquent behavior. Those teens who had mothers who were recurrently depressed engaged in more nonviolent risky behaviors compared to those whose mothers had little or no depression.
Teens whose mothers became depressed later, when they had already reached adolescence, did not engage in risky behavior any more than those whose mothers were not depressed.
These results do not prove that a mother's depression when her children are young causes later behavior problems, just that there appears to be an association.
Previous research has suggested that there is a link between a mother's depression during pregnancy or when her baby is an infant and that child's mental health in adolescence. But not much has been known about a mother's depression and later teen behavior.
The study was published in the journal Pediatrics and was reported on by Reuters Health.
