ABSTRACT
The parent-child relationship is one of the most important factors in the physical and psychological development of a child. When this bond is disrupted by parental mental illness, both the parent and the child suffer. One of the most common and most debilitating forms of mental illness in parents is major depressive disorder (MDD), which affects more than 33 million adults in the United States (Kessler et al., 2003). According to a National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (NRC & IOM, 2009a) report, about 17% of parents with at least one child under the age of 18 will experience severe depression at some point throughout their lifetime, and an estimated 15.6 million children are living with a depressed parent. In addition, in about 4% of the families with parental depression, both maternal depression and paternal depression have been found to occur within the same year (Davé, Petersen, Sherr, & Nazareth, 2010). Therefore, there is a significant risk that children will have at least one parent suffering with depression at some point during their childhood.
