TY  - JOUR
TI  - Long-term influences of parental divorce on offspring affective disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis
EP  - 114
VL  - 218
AV  - public
SP  - 105
Y1  - 2017/08/15/
N1  - This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher?s terms and conditions.
ID  - discovery10070982
N2  - Background: The prevalence of divorce in Western countries has increased in recent
decades. However, there is no recent systematic review and/or meta-analysis of studies
testing for long-term effects of parental divorce on offspring affective disorders. The present
study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies published since 1980
testing for the association between parental divorce and offspring depression and anxiety in
adulthood.
Method: PUBMED, Science Direct, Medline, PsychInfo, and PsychArticles databases were
searched for eligible studies. Random-effect meta-analyses were used to synthesize effect
sizes and to test whether associations of parental divorce with offspring affective disorders
differ among three publication periods (i.e., before 1996, 1996-2005, 2006-2015).
Results: In total, 29 studies were eligible for the systematic review, and 18 studies were
included in the meta-analyses (depression: n=21,581; anxiety: n=2,472). There was
significant association between parental divorce and offspring depression (OR=1.56; 95%CI
[1.31, 1.86]), but not anxiety (OR=1.16; 95%CI [0.98, 1.38]). The effect of parental divorce
on offspring depression was not weaker in the reports published in more recent decades.
Limitations: There is limited research in relation to offspring anxiety in adulthood.
Conclusions: Parental divorce is associated with an increased risk of adult offspring
depression, with no indication of the effect being weaker in recent publications.
SN  - 0165-0327
UR  - http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2017.04.015
JF  - Journal of Affective Disorders
KW  - depression; anxiety; childhood adversity; parental separation; lifespan
A1  - Sands, A
A1  - Thompson, EJ
A1  - Gaysina, D
ER  -