Research led by the Karolinska Institutet reports that offspring of parents with mental disorders face increased mortality, with the highest risks for unnatural deaths and when both parents had diagnoses.

Parental mental disorders have been linked to infant mortality and to multiple developmental, mental, and somatic outcomes, while links with long-term offspring mortality remained unclear.

In the study, “Parental Mental Disorders and Offspring Mortality up to Middle Age,” published in JAMA Psychiatry, researchers conducted a nationwide register-based cohort study to investigate associations between parental mental disorders and mortality in offspring up to middle age.