SynthesisTranslational psychiatry2021
Parental characteristics and offspring mental health and related outcomes: a systematic review of genetically informative literature.
Synthesis in Translational psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 82 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
82 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Childhood Maltreatment and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Quasi-Experimental Studies.The American journal of psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Prenatal smoking, alcohol and caffeine exposure and offspring externalizing disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2022Pooled it
- A multidisciplinary intervention targeting pragmatic language and maternal flexibility in Egyptian children with oppositional defiant disorder.BMC psychology · 2026Trial
- Family functioning following a brief, virtual emotion-focused family therapy intervention for children's mental health.JCPP advances · 2026Article
- Type and developmental timing of childhood adversity predicts psychopathology symptoms in a South African birth cohort.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Association between parental ADHD and adverse offspring outcomes: Evidence from a nationwide Swedish register-based study.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- ADHD and Student Grades in Children from the ABCD StudyBehavior genetics · 2026Article
- No evidence of parental mental health influencing children's academic achievement: a within-family study.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- Neurobehavioural genes exert indirect genetic effects on blood lipid profiles through behavioural traits.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Editorial: When children also shape the family environment.JCPP advances · 2026Article
- Indirect Genetic Effects on Alcohol Use Disorder and Nicotine Dependence.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Racial Discrimination and Mental Health Among Latine Adolescents: Parenting and Conflict as Potential Moderators.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Early environmental risks and the developmental dynamics of internalizing and externalizing problems from birth to adolescence.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- Parental Health Literacy as a Contextual Factor in Proxy-Reported Child Mental Health: A Population-Based Study of Children Aged 6-10 Years.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Depression and Crime Across Different Neighborhoods in the Swedish General Population.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Polygenic scores for psychiatric traits mediate the impact of multigenerational history for depression on offspring psychopathology.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Mental health literacy as a mediator between parental and adolescent depression and anxiety in Chinese resource-poor region.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Psychiatric disorders following the clustering of family disadvantages in previous generations: a multigenerational cohort study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Epigenetic regulation in early embryogenesis: mechanisms, developmental programming, and transgenerational implications.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Genetic nurture effects in depressive and anxiety disorders and symptoms, and in related traits.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
22 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Various parental characteristics, including psychiatric disorders and parenting behaviours, are associated with offspring mental health and related outcomes in observational studies. The application of genetically informative designs is crucial to disentangle the role of genetic and environmental factors (as well as gene-environment correlation) underlying these observations, as parents provide not only the rearing environment but also transmit 50% of their genes to their offspring. This article first provides an overview of behavioural genetics, matched-pair, and molecular genetics designs that can be applied to investigate parent-offspring associations, whilst modelling or accounting for genetic effects. We then present a systematic literature review of genetically informative studies investigating associations between parental characteristics and offspring mental health and related outcomes, published since 2014. The reviewed studies provide reliable evidence of genetic transmission of depression, criminal behaviour, educational attainment, and substance use. These results highlight that studies that do not use genetically informative designs are likely to misinterpret the mechanisms underlying these parent-offspring associations. After accounting for genetic effects, several parental characteristics, including parental psychiatric traits and parenting behaviours, were associated with offspring internalising problems, externalising problems, educational attainment, substance use, and personality through environmental pathways. Overall, genetically informative designs to study intergenerational transmission prove valuable for the understanding of individual differences in offspring mental health and related outcomes, and mechanisms of transmission within families.
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