Association seen between anxiety disorder in same-sex parent, offspring
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Researchers observed an association between a parent’s anxiety disorder and anxiety disorders in their children of the same sex, according to data published in JAMA Network Open.
Barbara Pavlova, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, and colleagues aimed to examine whether the transmission of anxiety from parents to children is sex specific.
“One of the strongest known risk factors for developing an anxiety disorder is having a parent with an anxiety disorder, an effect that increases with [two] parents being affected,” Pavlova and colleagues wrote. “This association could be attributable to the parents passing on genetic risk to their offspring and the impact parents have on their children’s environment.”
Pavlova and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional family study among participants recruited from the general Nova Scotia population from February 2013 through January 2020. Participants were given semi-structured interviews, which were used to establish lifetime diagnoses of anxiety disorders in parents and offspring.
A total of 398 offspring were included (203 female, mean age 11.1 years; 195 male, mean age 10.6 years), along with 221 mothers and 237 fathers.
Anxiety disorders in the same-sex parent were associated with increased rates of anxiety disorders in the offspring (OR 2.85; 95% CI, 1.52-5.34), while anxiety disorders in opposite-sex parents were not (OR, 1.51; 95% CI, 0.81-2.81).
Additionally, sharing a household with a same-sex parent without anxiety was associated with lower rates of anxiety in offspring (OR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.22-0.67). However, the presence of an opposite-sex parent without anxiety was not associated with lower rates of offspring anxiety (OR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.56-1.63).
“Future multigenerational studies should collect data on sex-specific transmission of anxiety disorders,” Pavlova and colleagues wrote. “Focusing on lifetime as well as current anxiety disorders in parents and offspring may elucidate whether parents’ recovery from anxiety disorders prevents the onset or maintenance of anxiety disorders in their offspring.”