Background: Offspring of parents with Bipolar affective disorder are at risk for a spectrum of future psychiatric disorders. Although the link between family functioning and children's development remained well-established, there is a small research examining whether family factors play a role in helping children with behavior problems outgrow their difficulties.
Aim of the work: The current study was to identify the risk factors that contributes to the development of psychiatric morbidity, to identify the nature of psychiatric morbidity that affects these children. Patients and methods: A sample consist of 200 participants was recruited and divided into 100 offspring of parents diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder using SCID-I, patients were selected from either new or follow up cases, who were attending the outpatient clinics, psychiatry department, Ain Shams University Hospitals) And 100 offspring of parents with irrelevant psychiatric history. Children were also evaluated by The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to screen for psychopathology.
Results: offspring of parents with Bipolar affective disorder are at increased risk of developing a wide range of psychiatric disorders and accompanying dysfunction than offspring of healthy or non-BP parents. the most prevalent behavior among cases was attention problems 75%, aggression 63%, social problem 48% Conclusion: These findings demonstrated the Offspring of BD are at significantly higher risk of developing a broad range of affective and non-affective psychopathology when compared to control offspring.