Researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), have just released their findings on the association between a parent’s history of mental disorders when the parent also has an autistic child.  It seems parents of autistic children are hospitalized for issues of mental distress at double the rate of parents without autistic children.

The UNC research team, led by Julie Daniels, PhD, assistant professor in the departments of epidemiology and maternal and child health at UNC’s School of Public Health, reviewed birth and hospital records from Sweden in order to ascertain whether or not families that experience psychiatric disorders also experience autism at a higher rate than the general population.  Citing earlier studies that indicate a high rate of psychiatric disorders in families that include an autistic child, the research team focused on parental mental health as an indicator for autism in their children.

Some mental issues in parents that were considered are schizophrenia, depression, and personality disorders.  Schizophrenia in either parent was indicated as causing twice the rate of autism in his or her children while maternal depression and personality disorders were associated with autism in offspring although a father’s depression or personality disorders seemed to have little effect on autism in his children.

The study, published in the May 5 issue of the journal, Pediatrics, compared family history for mental illness in 1,237 children born from 1977 and 2003 and diagnosed with autism before they turned 10 years old.  This study sample was compared with a control group of 30,925 children without autism who were matched according to gender, hospital, and age.

The analysis revealed the association between parental mental health and autistic children regardless of the time in life the parent was hospitalized.  The research team expects the study to lead physicians to look to parental psychiatric disorders as a means of identifying and treating autism in children and to perhaps lead to further research to determine if such parental disorders may be a cause of autism in their offspring.