Autism Linked to Parents' Mental Health Issues

(May 16, 2008) - A new study says that autism (Read about "Autism Spectrum Disorders") may actually be a result of heredity issues that show up as different types of mental health problems in different generations. Parents of children with autism were roughly twice as likely to have been hospitalized for a mental disorder, such as schizophrenia (Read about "Schizophrenia"), than parents of other children, in an analysis of birth and hospital records.

The study examined 1,237 children born between 1977 and 2003 who were diagnosed with autism before age 10, and compared them with 30,925 control subjects matched for gender, year of birth and hospital. Previous research has found psychiatric disorders are more common among family members of individuals with autism, a finding replicated in this study.

The study, titled "Parental Psychiatric Disorders Associated With Autism Spectrum Disorders in the Offspring," appears in the journal Pediatrics.

The large sample size of this study enabled researchers to distinguish between psychiatric history among mothers versus fathers in relation to autism. Both mothers and fathers with schizophrenia were about twice as likely to have a child diagnosed with autism. For other disorders, including depression (Read about "Depressive Illnesses") and neurotic and personality disorder, an association with childhood autism was found only for maternal disorders, not for paternal disorders.

The association was present regardless of the timing of the parent's diagnosis relative to the child's diagnosis. The authors of the study claim that the results support the hypothesis that there is a familial predisposition that presents differently in the parent than in the child and probably requires other genetic or environmental factors to be expressed.