A new study has reported that children who live with fathers suffering from depression can lead to behaviour and emotional problems. The study is one of the first of its kind investigating the influence of the father’s mental health as opposed to the more researched effect of maternal depression on a child’s wellbeing .
The research that took over four years to complete was conducted at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre and surveyed 22,000 parents and children.
The results of the study concluded that 11 percent of children whose fathers had been diagnosed with depression were reported to have behavioural and emotional problems, comparably only 6 percent of children had these problems without depressed fathers.
The researchers reported that depression changed social interactions with can have extremely detrimental effects to a child’s behavioural and emotional wellbeing .
However it was also noted in the study that the number of children with behaviour and emotional problems was as high as 19 percent in children with depressed mothers.
This study has highlighted the need to help parents who are suffering from mental disorders such as depression in order that the next generation do not also suffer.
