Csajbók Zsófia, Brennan Kearns Pavla
Faculty of Humanities, https://ror.org/024d6js02Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Second Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Eur Psychiatry. 2025 Jul 14;68(1):e111. doi: 10.1192/j.eurpsy.2025.10067.
While risk factors for children's internalizing and externalizing symptom trajectories have been widely studied, their association with parental depressive symptom trajectories has yet to be explored.
We used data from a prospective birth cohort of 2,542 Czech children and their parents. Children reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms at ages 11, 15, and 18 years. Parental depressive symptoms were assessed eight times from the prenatal period to the child's age of 11 years. Latent Class Growth Mixture Modeling identified parallel trajectories of children's symptoms. Five parental depressive symptom trajectories were adopted from previous research.
We identified four distinct classes of children's symptom trajectories: (1) low internalizing and low externalizing (64%), (2) low internalizing and high externalizing (8%), (3) elevated internalizing and elevated externalizing (19%), and (4) high internalizing and elevated externalizing symptoms (9%). Children were more likely to experience any symptoms if their mothers had elevated depressive symptoms. High maternal and paternal depressive symptoms were associated with high internalizing and elevated externalizing symptoms in children. Constantly depressed mothers with elevated depressive symptoms in fathers had a high likelihood of any symptom trajectories in children. Other strong predictors of children's symptom trajectories included parental relationship status (e.g., divorce), prior abortion, as well as children's sex, urban versus rural residence, stressful life events, and self-esteem.
Parents' and children's mental health trajectories are interconnected. Given the strong influence of parental relationship dynamics on both parental and child mental health, interventions should prioritize mitigating relationship strains to support family well-being.
虽然儿童内化和外化症状轨迹的风险因素已得到广泛研究，但它们与父母抑郁症状轨迹的关联尚未得到探讨。
我们使用了来自2542名捷克儿童及其父母的前瞻性出生队列的数据。儿童在11岁、15岁和18岁时报告内化和外化症状。从孕期到孩子11岁，对父母的抑郁症状进行了八次评估。潜在类别增长混合模型确定了儿童症状的平行轨迹。从先前的研究中采用了五种父母抑郁症状轨迹。
我们确定了四类不同的儿童症状轨迹：（1）低内化和低外化（64%），（2）低内化和高外化（8%），（3）内化升高和外化升高（19%），以及（4）高内化和外化症状升高（9%）。如果母亲有升高的抑郁症状，儿童更有可能出现任何症状。母亲和父亲的高抑郁症状与儿童的高内化和外化症状相关。母亲持续抑郁且父亲抑郁症状升高的情况下，儿童出现任何症状轨迹的可能性很高。儿童症状轨迹的其他强预测因素包括父母关系状况（如离婚）、既往流产，以及儿童的性别、城乡居住情况、压力性生活事件和自尊。
父母和儿童的心理健康轨迹是相互关联的。鉴于父母关系动态对父母和儿童心理健康都有强烈影响，干预措施应优先减轻关系紧张，以支持家庭幸福。
