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Anxiety disorders in mothers and their children : prospective-longitudinal community study - authors reply
Journal
British journal of psychiatry
Volume
193
Number
1
Pages / Article-Number
80-80
Abstract
As Mushtaq & Minn-Din correctly point out, Bijl et al1did not find associations between prevalence rates of any psychiatricdisorder (including anxiety disorders) in children and anxiety-relatedsymptoms in parents. However, one must be aware of severalmethodological differences to our investigation: the resultscited by Mushtaq & Minn-Din are based on 12-month prevalencerates and multivariate logistic regression analysis additionallycontrolling for childhood adversities and socio-demographic characteristics. We would like to clarify that the resultsof the Bijl et al paper are much more comparable with our studyand that the results we are actually referring to are thosebased on life-time prevalence rates of psychiatric disordersin children without controlling for childhood adversities andreported separately for the various offspring disorders. Here, Bijl et al clearly report associations between anxiety in parentsand children.
In addition, it is true that the adult children in the Bijlet al study were considerably older (18–65 years) thanthe offspring in our study (17–21 years at follow-up).We would like to add that there are other substantial waysin which the studies differ; for example, our use of assessmentvia direct interviews v. family-history information.1 Nevertheless,we do not see why our claim that we confirm and extend the Bijlet al study should be problematic, especially when taking into account the low median for age at onset of anxiety disorders.2
We would also like to point out that both studies were community-basedso that the use of the term ‘patients’ by Mushtaq& Minn-Din is slightly misleading.