Siblings of Adults With Mild Intellectual Deficits or Mental Illness: Differential Life Course Outcomes (PDF; 81 KB)
Source: Journal of Family Psychology (via American Psychological Association)
From press release:

People who have a sibling with a mental illness are more likely to suffer episodes of depression at some point in their lives, say researchers who analyzed four decades of data.

Additionally, they found people with a sibling with low IQ are more likely to live near that brother or sister – but be somewhat emotionally detached from that sibling.
…
The researchers found people who had siblings with mental illnesses were 63 percent more likely to report having a depressive episode during their lifetime. A depressive episode was described as lasting for at least two weeks and could include a variety of symptoms such as feeling lonely, crying and losing appetite.

They also found the brothers and sisters of the people with low IQs were 18 percent more likely to live in the same state as the disabled brother or sister than those in the comparison group. However, they were significantly less likely to have contact with the disabled sibling, reporting an average of 13 fewer contacts a year with their disabled sibling than the comparison group. In addition, they reported feeling less emotionally close to their siblings.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under Children and families, Mental health and substance abuse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.