Developmental delay in offspring of parents with affective disorders and depression: psycho-social sequels or a constitutional state?

At an early age, offspring of parents with affective disorders and long-lasting depression exhibited elevated rates of psychomotor and language delay, behavior problems and a greater need for somatic psychiatric care compared to matched control children (Harjan 1988, I, II, III). The present report analyses the problem of these children regarding psychomotor and language delay (PMLD) seen in a great number of children and somewhat more often in boys compared with those without this handicap. The study shows that children with PMLD of parents with affective disorders and long-lasting depression differ from those without PMLD with respect to early behavior problems, need for child psychiatric care during latency, and they are loaded by more broken homes and longer stay in pediatric wards. The two groups are similar in aspects of low social standing, mean parental age, perinatal risk factors, delayed somatic growth, incidence of psychiatric registrations and rate and nature of somatic disorders. The developmental delay may be a hereditary disturbance either related to affective disorder or to a concomitant factor, or the developmental delay may relate to the adverse environmental situation. It is also obvious that simultaneous parental illness, social breakdown and genetic constitution form a critical multifactoral loading on the child. The high rate of developmental delay among offspring of parents with affective disorders stresses the importance of giving attention to the children of parents with affective disorders and long-lasting depression. The developmental delay per se is an important disorder for early behavior problems and need for child and youth psychiatric care.