Depression: Feeling guilty makes you vulnerable

Carola Felchner is a freelance writer in the medical department and a certified training and nutrition advisor. She worked for various specialist magazines and online portals before becoming a freelance journalist in 2015. Before starting her internship, she studied translation and interpreting in Kempten and Munich.

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Children who believe they are responsible for their mother's depression are more susceptible to the disease themselves.

Children of mentally ill parents themselves are at higher risk of developing a mental illness in the course of their lives. A genetic predisposition plays a role here. However, the enormous emotional burden that such a family constellation creates is also heavy.

Researchers have now found a special factor that increases the risk of later illness: feelings of guilt. If the children feel that they are responsible for their mother's depressed mood, for example, they are particularly prone to depression themselves.

Brooding makes you sad

As can be seen from two studies, such children often show symptoms themselves and are prone to negative thoughts and brooding, according to the magazine "Psychologie Heute" (July 2020 edition). On the other hand, children who do not feel responsible for themselves show no symptoms.

Helplessness creates guilt

A total of 129 mother-child pairs were interviewed in the studies. The children were on average 13 years old, the mothers in their early 40s. All were asked about their own assessments and those of the other. It was also recorded what ideas the respondents had of sadness.

The researchers attribute the dangerous development to a special thinking style that children can already have: those affected tend to blame themselves for events or behavior of others that they do not understand and cannot change.

Children adopt problematic thinking styles

Children with such a negative thinking style could have adopted it from their mother at an early age. It is characteristic then that these children tried to solve the problems of the depressed mother.

The scientists recommend that psychotherapists should pay attention to this tendency whenever possible. So that it doesn't get that far in the first place, children from families with a mentally ill parent need early and special support.

(caf / dpa)

Tags:  elderly care palliative medicine magazine