If depression runs in your family, it’s natural to wonder whether it will affect you too. Perhaps you’ve watched a parent struggle with it for years, and now you’re starting to recognize similar patterns in yourself. Or maybe you’re a parent dealing with depression, and the concern has turned toward your own children. Having those thoughts in the first place shows a willingness to understand what’s happening, and that awareness is a solid place to start.
This article explores the often misunderstood topic of intergenerational depression. It will explain how it manifests and how to interrupt the process so that depression in families feels less like a foregone conclusion.
Founded in 2010, A Mission For Michael (AMFM) offers specialized mental health care across California, Minnesota, and Virginia. Our accredited facilities provide residential and outpatient programs, utilizing evidence-based therapies such as CBT, DBT, and EMDR.
Our dedicated team of licensed professionals ensures every client receives the best care possible, supported by accreditation from The Joint Commission. We are committed to safety and personalized treatment plans.
What Is Intergenerational Depression?
Intergenerational depression refers to depression that reoccurs across two or more generations within the same family. It’s not classed as a separate diagnosis from depression, but rather a way of understanding generational mental health and how depression can be passed down through genetics and environmental factors.
Research has shown that children of parents with depression are three to six times more likely to develop the condition themselves.1
Part of what makes intergenerational depression difficult to recognize is that when depression has been present in your family for a long time, the behaviours associated with it can start to feel normal.
Factors like low mood or emotional withdrawal may just seem like “the way things are” rather than something that could be addressed. This normalization could be one of the reasons the pattern continues unchallenged across generations, and why understanding it is so important.
What Causes Intergenerational Depression?
When you realize that depression has appeared across multiple generations in the same family, the natural question is “why?” But the answer is a lot more layered than most people expect, because there’s never a single mechanism responsible.
However, there are two factors that are incredibly important in determining intergenerational depression: genetics and environment.
Genetic Factors
Depression has a heritable component, and this is well supported by twin and family studies. One review estimated the heritability of major depression at 37%, meaning that roughly a third of the risk can be attributed to genetic factors.2
The study also found that immediate relatives of people with depression are around two to three times more likely to develop the condition themselves.
Newer research adds to this by finding that there are nearly 300 genetic variations linked to depression risk.3 Each of these variants has a tiny impact on the overall chances of developing depression, but if a person has multiple variants, the risk increases.
But it’s important to remember that while a genetic predisposition can increase vulnerability, it doesn’t guarantee that depression will develop. What happens within your environment matters just as much, if not more, than what you inherit.
Environmental Factors
Growing up with a parent or close family member who has depression can affect the home environment, especially for children.
Research has shown that parental depression is linked with increased conflict in the home, reduced emotional responsiveness toward children, insecure attachment styles, and higher rates of developing anxiety disorders, all of which carry their own risk for depression later in life.⁴
Children also learn how to cope with difficult emotions by watching the adults around them. If the model they grow up with involves withdrawal or avoidance, those traits can become ingrained before the child is old enough to recognize them.
One study found that children who grew up experiencing less emotional warmth from a parent had an increased likelihood of developing similar emotional patterns themselves.5
This doesn’t mean the parent with depression is doing anything wrong on purpose, as the condition can make it harder to be emotionally present. But the reduced emotional availability can affect how a child learns to process their own feelings as they get older.
A Combination of Both
The reality is that intergenerational depression may be caused by a mix of both genetics and environment. For example, a child may inherit a genetic vulnerability to depression and then grow up in an environment that promotes it.
A study that focused on three generations found that children with both depressed parents and depressed grandparents had the highest rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms.4 This may suggest that the more generations affected, the stronger the combined genetic and environmental risk becomes.
This is also where the cycle becomes self-reinforcing. A parent with depression may struggle with emotional availability, which increases their child’s own risk for depression.1 That child can then grow up to have children of their own, and without intervention, the intergenerational depression continues.
When we look at intergenerational depression from this angle, it’s clear to see how important it is to recognize and act on family members’ depression. Without intervention, this cycle could continue for many generations to come.
What Does This Mean for You?
If depression has been present in your family across more than one generation, it doesn’t mean that you’re automatically locked into the same outcomes. What the research tells us is that the risk is higher, but risk and certainty are two very different things.
Plenty of people with a strong family history of depression never develop it, and plenty of those who do are able to manage it effectively with the right support.6
The value in recognizing family mental health patterns is that it gives you something to work with. Instead of wondering why you feel the way you do, you now have context, and context is what makes it possible to take targeted action.
How Can I Break The Cycle of Intergenerational Depression?
The research on intergenerational depression can feel heavy when you first read into it, almost like a certainty that depression is coming your way. But the encouraging part is that this cycle can be interrupted. Below, we look at what that can involve…
For Yourself
Therapy for family depression is one of the most effective tools for breaking the intergenerational pattern.7 Approaches, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can help you identify the thought patterns and beliefs about emotions that you may have inherited from the environment you grew up in.
These are the patterns that feel so automatic they don’t even register as problematic. But when you start to place them under a microscope, the connection to your family’s way of handling things becomes clearer.
Working through these aspects with a therapist also creates breathing room to examine how your upbringing has influenced the way you respond to the world around you.
When you start to understand these connections, you’re in the best possible position to identify them. It also gives you a chance to respond differently, rather than repeating patterns that may have harmed earlier generations in your family.
For Your Children
If you’re a parent with depression, the concern about whether your children will develop it too is understandable. This is a real risk, but it’s not by any means inevitable, and research highlights various protective factors that can strongly reduce the risk.8
For example, children who grow up in homes where feelings are acknowledged and discussed develop stronger ways of managing their emotions.9 If your depression has caused a home environment where this isn’t the case, it could be worth speaking with a therapist. They can help you develop healthier coping skills that you’ll then be able to model in front of your children.
Modeling these healthy coping skills, rather than hiding your challenges, teaches them that difficult feelings are feelings that deserve to be worked through.9
Early intervention is another aspect that can make all the difference. If you notice your child showing signs of depression, addressing it early with professional support can prevent the pattern from taking hold the way it may have in previous generations.
There is no guarantee that your child will never experience depression, as this is something that is almost impossible to guarantee for anyone. But what these measures can do is make sure they have all the right tools in their own toolbox to manage if they ever do.
When your child knows that asking for help is “just something your family does”, it makes it easier to catch signs in their earliest form.
AMFM: Offering Expert Counseling for Intergenerational Depression
If anything here has resonated with you, it’s not something that should be ignored. Depression in families is something that can be changed, and this is where A Mission For Michael can help.
Our therapeutic approaches offer strategies to break cycles of depression that can help improve generational mental health.
Our aim is to make sure that you have the right skills so that coping with inherited depression becomes something you feel equipped to manage, rather than something that controls how your life unfolds.
Sometimes the hardest part is knowing whether what you’re feeling warrants professional support. If depression has been present in your family, that history alone is reason enough to have the conversation.
Contact AMFM today, and a member of our team will be happy to answer any questions you may have and offer guidance on the next steps available to you.
References
- Gotlib, I. H., Goodman, S. H., & Humphreys, K. L. (2020). Studying the intergenerational transmission of risk for depression: Current status and future directions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(2), 174–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420901590
- Sullivan, P. F., Neale, M. C., & Kendler, K. S. (2000). Genetic epidemiology of major depression: Review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(10), 1552–1562. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.157.10.1552
- King’s College London. (2025, January 14). Global study pinpoints genes for depression across ethnicities. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/global-study-pinpoints-genes-for-depression-across-ethnicities
- Pettit, J. W., Olino, T. M., Roberts, R. E., Seeley, J. R., & Lewinsohn, P. M. (2008). Intergenerational transmission of internalizing problems: Effects of parental and grandparental major depressive disorder on child behavior. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 37(3), 640–650. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374410802148129
- Johnco, C. J., Magson, N. R., Fardouly, J., Oar, E. L., Forbes, M. K., Richardson, C., & Rapee, R. M. (2021). The role of parenting behaviors in the bidirectional and intergenerational transmission of depression and anxiety between parents and early adolescent youth. Depression and Anxiety, 38(12), 1323–1335. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.23197
- Padaigaitė-Gulbinienė, E., Maruyama, J. M., Hammerton, G., Rice, F., & Collishaw, S. (2025). Factors associated with mental health resilience in the child, adolescent and adult offspring of depressed parents: A systematic literature review. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, 22, 100983. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadr.2025.100983
- Weissman, M. M. (2009). Translating intergenerational research on depression into clinical practice. JAMA, 302(24), 2695–2696. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.1919
- Tietbohl-Santos, B., Shintani, A. O., Montezano, B. B., Biazin, P., Signori, G. M., Pulice, R., Vecchia, G. F. D., Bebber, J. C., Noronha, L., & Passos, I. C. (2024). Protective factors against depression in high-risk children and adolescents: A systematic review of longitudinal studies. Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 46, e20233363. https://doi.org/10.47626/1516-4446-2023-3363
- Benatov, J. (2019). Parents’ feelings, coping strategies and sense of parental self-efficacy when dealing with children’s victimization experiences. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10, Article 700.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00700
