Father’s Mental Health Impacts Children

The Telegraph website out of the UK has an article posted concerning how the mental health status of a father impacts their children’s subsequent struggles with depression, anxiety, and abuse of drugs and alcohol. I’m not certain that this is new information. In fact, it seems like common sense.

Medical correspondent Kate Devlin makes a couple of points in an effort to substantiate the base thesis of her piece, namely that most men become fathers between 18-35 (a peak time for onset of mental illness, apparently) and the fact that children tend to be closer and spend more time with mothers, so the role of the dad may have been “under emphasized”, which I find to be terribly sexist and poor science if it’s true.

It’s widely understood that a combination of nature vs. nurture is typically the basis for mental conditions such as depression and substance abuse, and growing up in an environment where this behavior is demonstrated could easily influence similar behaviors in impressionable kids. Conversely, there has to be some DNA component for some of these disorders, so genetics undoubtedly plays a role, and the combination of similar genes and exposure is bound to lead to higher incidence in those families than society in general.

Also, boys are more susceptible to mental illnesses of their father than girls, while girls tend to suffer more from the same types of disorders as their mothers.

I would add another variable into the mix – I’ve found that men are much less likely to initiate diagnosis and treatment, so that could contribute to some of the same behavior in their children.

Father’s mental health impacts on children, study finds.

Genetic Anxiety Doesn’t Always Lead to a Fearful Life

In the Nature vs. Nurture debate, it’s often posited that our destiny isn’t an either-or proposition, but rather a complex combination of the two. Why should anxiety be any different?

While it’s true that people with certain genotypes are at greater risk for drug & alcohol abuse, anxiety, and depression, that does not necessarily mean they are predestined to a life of misery, fear, or negative outcome. That’s where the nurture part seems to play a key role.

Having a single nurturing influence, while valuable, seems rather ineffective compared with having a robust nurturing environment during a child’s development when it comes to these genetic issues. So, those who may have one of those nasty genes in their DNA may be protected from the bad effects normally associated with them if raised in a richly supportive climate.

The next step would logically include identification of the qualifying genotypes to assist in targeting at-risk children to ensure they have a backdrop of adequate care during development, much like you could focus on nutrition and screening if your genome indicated predilection toward diabetes or allergies.

Genetic anxiety susceptibility does not have to be destiny