Maternal symptoms of depression and paranoid ideation can be predictive of the onset of eating disorders in early adolescents offspring: A nine-year longitudinal study

Studies in the Developmental Psychopathology framework have demonstrated the maladaptive influence of maternal depression on offspring emotional-behavioral functioning. Moreover, many Authors have suggested that the chronicity and timing of maternal depression can be crucial aspects predictive of specific maladaptive outcomes in children such as Eating Disorders in early adolescence. Longitudinal studies in the field have usually focused on small clinical samples and covering short periods of time, typically from early childhood to toddlerhood. The present longitudinal study was aimed at investigating the stability of children and mother's psychopathological symptoms across different ages (2, 5, 8 years) in a community sample, and also at evaluating the capacity of these psychopathological problems to identify individuals at risk for the onset of eating disorders in adolescence. Results showed that both children's and mother's symptoms, assessed at different ages, can contribute to identify adolescents at risk for the onset of eating disorders. Moreover, among mothers' symptoms, only depression and paranoid ideation, which showed a high stability over time, gave a significant contribution to the categorization of youth at risk for eating disorders. Our study adds to the literature because, not only we confirmed the predictive power of general psychopathological maternal risk on offspring mental health, but we also found the effect of two specific symptomatic configurations: depression and paranoid ideation.