Continued from here ...

This story on a large study ... almost 70,000 children of families with depressive parents ... will, I'm sure, be mentioned in connection with adoption in future.

This could be a major concern, so I'm hoping the study will be looked at closely from many angles, and that the research gets a thorough going-over. As we know, there are many ways to interpret data.

This study, conducted by Kaiser Permanente of Colorado, looked mainly at costs of healthcare for children and determined which kids were 'exposed' to depressed parents by the medical records of those parents.

Stating that, "Children who have at least one depressed parent are more likely to use costly health-care services, such as visits to the emergency room and to specialists," and, "Infants of depressed parents had 14 percent more sick visits than children of non-depressed parents," it quotes Dr. Jane Ripperger-Suhler, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine as saying:

"It makes sense to me for a lot of reasons, and I think that we've been connecting parental depression to lots of different kinds of problems in children for a long time, and it's great to have a really big study to support that. The course of action is, first of all, let's treat parents and, second of all, maybe we need to make that treatment easier to access and more comprehensive."

Of the depressed parents identified, 79.7% were female, 31.7% male, and 83.9% were on antidepressant medication.

One conclusion I found interesting says, "The finding of higher excess visit rates for ED and sick visits among the youngest age groups may reflect the greater difficulty that depressed parents encounter confronting the challenge that is presented by figuring out the anatomic site and the severity of distress among preverbal children."

I might suggest that this could indicate these parents may be over-cautious, or lack a level of confidence others not so aware of personal limitations enjoy. Just a thought ...

For the full study, see the Pediatrics journal.

For more reading on depression and adoption, here's a link to a Dr. G blog from way back when that takes a lighter look, while this focuses on post-adoption depression.