A suicide attempt by a parent can increase the odds nearly five-fold that a child would attempt suicide, according to a new study.
Other studies have established that suicidal behaviour can run in families but few studies have looked at the pathways by which suicidal behaviour is transmitted in families, researchers said.
David A Brent, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pennsylvania, and coauthors studied children of parents with mood disorders who were followed for an average of nearly six years.
The study included 701 children (ages 10 to 50 years) of 334 parents with mood disorders, of whom 191 (57.2 per cent) had also made a suicide attempt.
Of the 701 offspring 44 (6.3 per cent) had made a suicide attempt before participating in the study and 29 (4.1 per cent) attempted suicide during the study follow-up.
Authors found a direct effect of a parent's suicide attempt on a suicide attempt by their child, even after researchers took into account a history of previous suicide attempt by the offspring and a familial transmission of mood disorder.
"Impulsive aggression was an important precursor of mood disorder and could be targeted in interventions designed to prevent youth at high familial risk from making a suicide attempt," the study said.
The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
