Post-natal depression in dads and links to their teenage daughters

Written by Beth Barker

​pPOD tops off 2018 with the publication of research from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The research was a collaboration between Leticia Gutierrez-Galve from University College London, Alan Stein and Lucy Hanington from the University of Oxford, Jon Heron of University of Bristol, Glyn Lewis from UCL, and pPOD’s very own Paul Ramchandani and Christine O’Farrelly from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge.

The research followed up over 3,000 families from Bristol, UK and examined how factors measured when the children in the study were born could influence their outcomes at 18 years old. One of the key findings of this paper was that signs of depression in dads early in their children’s lives, was linked to higher levels of depression in their daughters later in life. Interestingly, this pattern was not seen with dads who had sons.
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Read more about the research here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2719453