Medicine: evidence-based autobiography

Study Finds Depression Intensifies from One Generation to Next

As the medical community continues to more accurately diagnose depression and anxiety disorders, a new study sheds light on how these debilitating phenomena are passed down through the generations -- and may even intensify. Nearly 60 percent of children whose parents and grandparents suffered from depression have a psychiatric disorder before they reach their early teens, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). This incidence is more than double the number of children (approximately 28 percent) who develop such disorders with no family history of depression.