Women's experience of abuse in childhood and depressive symptoms in her adolescent and adult children

Background: The effects of childhood abuse may cross generations and adversely affect the health of offspring of women who experienced childhood abuse.

Objective: To examine whether mother’s experience of childhood abuse is associated with depressive symptoms in her adolescent and young adult children.

Methods: In 2014, data were linked from two large longitudinal cohorts of women (Nurses’ Health Study II [NHSII], N=8,883) and their children (Growing Up Today [GUTS] Study, N=11,404), 1989–2010. Risk ratios of children having high depressive symptoms and persistent high depressive symptoms by their mother’s childhood experience of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse were calculated. The extent to which mother’s depression, family characteristics, and child’s own abuse exposure accounted for possible associations was ascertained.

Results: Children of women who experienced severe childhood abuse had substantially greater likelihood of high depressive symptoms (RR=1.71, 95% CI=1.44, 2.03), and persistent high depressive symptoms (RR=2.56, 95% CI=1.59, 4.11) across adolescence and early adulthood compared with children of women who reported no abuse. Mother’s depression accounted for 18% and children’s exposure to abuse accounted for 44% of the elevated risk of high depressive symptoms in children of women abused. Disparities in depressive symptoms by mother’s abuse exposure were evident at age 12 years and persisted through age 31 years.

Conclusions: These findings provide further evidence that childhood abuse may not only adversely affect the health of the direct victim but may also affect her children’s health decades after the original traumatic events.