Parental Bipolar Disorders: effects on children

Background: Children of parents with bipolar disorder appear to have an increased risk of earlyonsetbipolar disorder, mood disorders and other psychiatric disorders. The aim of this study wasto compare the mental health of school-age children of parents with/without bipolar disorder.Methods: In this case control study following One hundred Offspring aged 6 to 12 years whohave parents with bipolar disorder and 200 offspring of 163 demographically matched controlparents. Parents with bipolar disorder were recruited from Farshchian psychiatric hospital inHamadan, Iran in 2014. The parent version of Child Symptom Inventory-4 questionnaire wasused to measure mental health. Mean comparisons were performed using Student’s t test whileeffect sizes were estimated by Cohen’s d coefficient. The Chi-Square test was used to assess thesignificant difference between frequency distribution of demographic variables in both groups.The significance level was considered less than 0.05.Results: There were statistically significant differences between children of parents with/withoutbipolar disorder on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder,conduct, generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, major depression, separation anxiety(p<0.001) and social phobia (p<0.05). Offspring of parents with BP are at high risk forpsychiatric disorders.Conclusions: These findings support the carefully evaluating and prospectively following thepsychopathology of offspring of parents with bipolar disorder are critical for early identificationand treatment.