Psychopathology in the offspring of parents with bipolar affective disorders

Thirty-nine children from intact families with a manic-depressive parent were evaluated by a semi-structured clinical interview and a number of rating scales for the presence or absence of psychopathology. This sample represents a larger one than in an earlier study, which showed minimal offspring psychopathology compared with reports of other investigators. The current study also examines the inter-relationships between the presence or absence of offspring psychopathology with both genetic loading and a number of psychosocial variables including measures of parental marital adjustment, severity and chronicity of proband parent illness and early exposure of children to parental illness. Nine of the thirty-nine children, (23%) received a positive DSM-III diagnosis, with depression of the dysthymic type being the most common. There was no significant correlation between genetic loading and offspring psychopathology. However, there were significant associations between children with psychopathology and paternal marital dissatisfaction and the age and chronicity of illness of the proband parent as compared with the children with no psychopathology.