Association of maternal depression with children's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Family problems are considered to be the main risk factor leading to the development of behavi oural problems during childhood and adolescence as well. A well documented fact in the current literature is that psychopathology of any kind in parents may influence behaviour, personality and appearance of psychopathology in their children. The permanent interaction between children's psychopathology or any kind of developmental disorder on one hand and parental psychopathology on the other, is considered to be one of the most important fields of research during the last decades. The aim of the present study was to review research concerning the relationship between maternal depressive disorder and children's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among members of the same family, the influence that each disorder has in the appearance and development of the other, and the way that the mother-child relationship is influenced by both. We conducted an electronic search through PubMed to detect articles concerning the association of maternal depressive disorder and children's ADHD among the members of the same family published in English from January 1980 to December 2015. The choice was strictly limited to articles concerning exclusively emotional disorders in mothers and ADHD in their children. This process concluded with the electronic research of bibliographic citations of the identified articles, or related articles, in order to locate additional sources. Considering as a fact the interaction between this developmental disorder, ADHD, and mother's psychological profile which is maternal depression for the present research, we report the following: among the 27 articles found, 24 concerned the influence of the mother's depression to the child's ADHD, and the remaining 3 concerned their genetic association. There were important limitations found as well. Despite the fact that all the studies included a control group, many of them did have a follow-up and were short-term studies. Their results were mostly heterogenous and therefore their meta-analysis proved impossible. There was evidence concerning the association between the two disorders as both maternal depressive disorder and children's ADHD influence each other through multiple psychosocial and biological factors. Nevertheless, more data is needed from well structured, homogenous studies, especially in the field of genetics, in order to document this association.