Partners and children’s genes influence mother’s depression
As a new mother, your environment in the first years of parenthood is critical for your mental health. But what if your environment was shaped by the genes of those around you. Can partners and children’s genes influence mother’s depression. New research shows they can, and they do.
Motherhood is a period of increased stress and uncertainty which carries an elevated risk of maternal depression.
Decades of social support theory points to a role of partners and children in mother’s mental health during the childbearing years but only recently were methods developed to unpack the mechanisms behind this.
A polygenic score serves as a count of the number of genes a person has, that have been previously associated with a trait. It’s as simple as this: high polygenic score = high genetic propensity for the trait, low polygenic score = low genetic propensity for the trait.
Postdoctoral Fellow Ziada Ayorech at the PROMENTA Research Center calculated polygenic scores for up to 25, 000 mothers, fathers and children participating in the Norwegian Mother Father and Child study (MoBa) and used them to predict mother’s symptoms of depression during pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood.
She expected to find that mother’s genes influence their own depression – decades of twin studies have demonstrated this.
But what is novel is that she found father’s and child’s genes also influenced mother’s depression and this effect is present during pregnancy, infancy and even up to 8 year’s after birth.
Having a partner or child with a higher genetic burden for mental health problems predicted women’s depression above and beyond women’s owns genes.
These results have implications for how we support depressed mothers suggesting for example, reducing father’s depression can have direct implications on women’s mental health. Our findings indicate that maternal depression is a family-wide problem requiring family-wide solutions.
Nøkkelord
Kontakter
Svein Harald MildeKommunikasjonsrådgiver
Kommunikasjonsrådgiver, pressekontakt og sosiale medier ved Psykologisk institutt, UiO
Bilder
Lenker
GenGeoRisk: Genetic and geographical determinants of depression
Maternal depression (MD) is the leading cause of perinatal mortality and it accounts for 20% of all postpartum deaths.
About the project
Although depression is projected to be the major contributor to disease burden worldwide by 2030, we lack fundamental knowledge on its aetiology. To address this issue, the EU-funded GenGeoRisk project will use data from MoBa, the world’s largest pregnancy cohort undertaken in the Norwegian population, to identify genetic variants specific to MD. The aim is to determine one’s general predisposition to psychopathologies and identify geographical parameters that may affect MD risk. Considering the high prevalence of depression and its pervasive and devastating impact, the project's results will help improve disease management.
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