Parents’ depression is linked to worse school performance in children

Children are likely to perform less well at school if their mother or father is depressed at any time, says an analysis of more than 1.1 million Swedish schoolchildren published in JAMA Psychiatry.1

The researchers looked at parental depression diagnoses from inpatient and outpatient records and the school grades of all children born in Sweden from 1984 to 1994. The final sample size was 1 124 162 children, of whom 48.9% were girls. Of their parents, 33 906 mothers (3%) and 23 724 …