Parenting Styles and Psychiatric Disorders in Children of Bipolar Parents

Abstract

Background: Bipolar disorders (BD) in parents can have different effects on children and perhaps as a reason of the incidence of various psychiatric disorders in them and they may show a particular parenting style due to features of their disease. Given a crucial role of parenting style in upbringing children, this study aimed to evaluate different styles of parenting and its relationship with psychiatric disorders in children of parents with bipolar disorder (PBD) compared with controls. Materials and Methods: In this case–control study, 500 parents with children aged 6–17 years were included that 250 of them with BD were selected as the case group and 250 of them were healthy as control group. The parents were selected according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5) by a physician. Psychiatric disorders in children were assessed by The Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for school-age children (KSADS). The collected data were analyzed with SPSS (version 20). Results: According to KSADS, there was significant difference between two groups of children in depression, mania, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder (P < 0.05). In authoritative dimension, parenting styles were effective in the incidence of psychosis (odds ratio [OR] [95% confidence interval (CI)]: 0.775 [0.63–0.95]) and led to a decrease of 0.320 times in the chance of oppositional defiant disorder incidence (OR [95% CI]: 0.320 [0.21–0.74]; P = 0.043) but an increase of 1.129 times in the chance of cigarette/tobacco use (OR [95% CI]: 1.129 [1.02–1.25]; P = 0.016). Conclusion: The chance of psychiatric disorder's incidence in children of PBD was so far more than children of healthy parents. Hence, the incidence of some psychiatric disorders in children can be associated with parenting styles.