29.09.2022New publication by Laura Bechtiger and colleagues from the Risk and Resilience team

A new paper by Laura Bechtiger and colleagues from the Risk and Resilience team (PI: Prof. Lilly Shanahan) and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro examines exposure to maternal depressive symptoms as a risk factor for adolescents’ unhealthy behavior. The study shows that maternal depressive symptoms in middle childhood and adolescence are directly associated with an accumulation of adolescents’ unhealthy behavior. Maternal depressive symptoms in early childhood were indirectly linked with adolescents’ unhealthy behaviors fifteen years later through the stability of maternal depressive symptoms and its association with children’s depressive symptoms. These findings highlights that the continuity of depressive symptoms across time and across generations may pose a risk factor for adolescents’ unhealthy behavior. Read the full paper published in Pediatrics here.