Review articleLong-term influences of parental divorce on offspring affective disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis

- Long-term effects of parental divorce on offspring affective disorders were investigated.
- Evidence from 29 eligible studies across the period of 35 years was synthesised.
- Parental divorce in childhood was associated with adult offspring depression.
- This effect did not decrease over time between 1980 and 2015.
- More research on parental divorce and adult offspring anxiety is needed.

BackgroundThe 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.MethodPUBMED, 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 differed among three publication periods (i.e., before 1996, 1996-2005, 2006-2015).ResultsIn total, 29 studies were eligible for the systematic review, and 18 studies were included in the meta-analyses (depression: n=21,581; anxiety: n=2472). 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.LimitationsThere is limited research in relation to offspring anxiety in adulthood.ConclusionsParental divorce is associated with an increased risk of adult offspring depression, with no indication of the effect being weaker in recent publications.