Wörn Jonathan, Balbo Nicoletta, Hank Karsten, Kravdal Øystein
Centre for Fertility and Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2024 Dec 11. doi: 10.1007/s00127-024-02803-1.
Mental health problems among adolescents have become more prevalent in recent years. Parents' and siblings' mental health might be affected by living with a depressed adolescent. This study examines how the mental health of family members develops in the years before and after an adolescent seeks help for depression.
Unique Norwegian register data that cover the full population are used to estimate models with individual fixed effects. The development in the probability of mental health consultations for parents and older siblings in families with a second-born adolescent seeking help for depression from a GP for the first time is compared to the respective development in families where the second-born adolescent has not had such health care consultation.
Results indicate that adolescents' depression consultations are associated with a simultaneous increase in mental health consultations in parents and siblings. Mothers and fathers are affected similarly, although the effect seems to be short-lived. Siblings experience a short-term increase in mental health consultations, in addition to a steeper long-term increase across the observation period, compared to peers in families where the second-born adolescent does not seek help for depression. Events that might affect the mental health of multiple family members simultaneously, specifically parental breakup and unemployment, did not explain the observed patterns.
Help-seeking for mental health problems is temporally aligned across family members. Intra- and intergenerational spillovers might contribute to this.
近年来，青少年心理健康问题日益普遍。父母和兄弟姐妹的心理健康可能会受到与抑郁青少年共同生活的影响。本研究探讨了家庭成员的心理健康在青少年寻求抑郁症帮助之前和之后的几年中是如何发展的。
使用涵盖全体人口的独特挪威登记数据来估计具有个体固定效应的模型。将家中排行第二的青少年首次向全科医生寻求抑郁症帮助的家庭中，父母和哥哥姐姐进行心理健康咨询的概率发展情况，与排行第二的青少年未进行此类医疗咨询的家庭中的相应发展情况进行比较。
结果表明，青少年的抑郁症咨询与父母和兄弟姐妹心理健康咨询的同时增加有关。母亲和父亲受到的影响相似，尽管这种影响似乎是短暂的。与家中排行第二的青少年不寻求抑郁症帮助的家庭中的同龄人相比，兄弟姐妹不仅在心理健康咨询方面经历了短期增加，而且在整个观察期内长期增加更为显著。可能同时影响多个家庭成员心理健康的事件，特别是父母离异和失业，并未解释所观察到的模式。
家庭成员在寻求心理健康问题帮助方面在时间上是一致的。代内和代际溢出效应可能对此有所贡献。
