Maternal depression across childhood and offspring young adult depression and anxiety: Testing adolescent emotion dynamics as transdiagnostic mechanisms.

Background: Early exposure to maternal depression can increase risk for offspring mental health problems across the lifespan. Less is known about the transdiagnostic pathways through which maternal depression influences offspring mental health risk in young adulthood. This pre-registered study tested the prospective associations of maternal depression (total exposure and instability) with offspring mental health in young adulthood and evaluated adolescent emotion dynamics as transdiagnostic mechanisms. Methods: This study used data from the Future Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; Results: Total exposure to maternal depression predicted greater odds of offspring young adult depression whereas instability in maternal depression was not directly associated with offspring mental health. Offspring biweekly emotion dynamics during adolescence significantly predicted subsequent anxiety and depression. Additionally, greater instability in maternal depression was associated with lower biweekly instability in sadness during adolescence, which was in turn associated with greater likelihood of young adult anxiety. Associations were independent of mean emotion levels and covariates. Conclusion: Overall, findings highlight the importance of considering how the dynamics of mood and emotions across generations (e.g., mother, offspring) and timescales (e.g., daily, biweekly, yearly) may shape young adult psychopathology. To build from these initial findings, future studies could investigate these processes using genetically informative longitudinal designs, causal mediation analyses, and continuous measures of maternal depression.