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Objective: To provide an overview of living arrangements during childhood for children of parents with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression., Method: Information was obtained from Danish registers on children's addresses and used to calculate the proportion living in different household living arrangements. The study was conducted as a prospective, register-based cohort study covering all children in the entire Danish population born after 1982 (N = 1,823,625) and their parents with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, or none of these disorders. Regression analyses were performed assessing the risk of dissolution of the conjugal family., Results: Children's living arrangements were characterized by fewer nuclear families and more single-parent-headed households when parents had serious mental illness (SMI). From birth, 15% to 20% of children lived with a single mother with SMI. Conjugal families were dissolved at higher rates if a parent had SMI, especially if the mother (incidence rate ratio 2.98; 95% CI 2.80-3.17) or the father (incidence rate ratio 2.60; 95% CI 2.47-2.74) had schizophrenia. Risks for family dissolution varied greatly with parents' socioeconomic position in all diagnostic groups., Conclusion: Parents' SMI affects children's family living arrangements because fewer children live with both parents and more children live with a single parent or are separated from both parents. Family cohesion seems especially difficult to maintain when parents have schizophrenia., (Copyright © 2016 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To study how often severe psychiatric disorders adversely affect a person's ability to be a parent, indicated by the child being placed in out-of-home care., Method: This study was conducted in 2013 as a prospective, register-based cohort study covering all first-born singletons in the entire Danish population born after 1982 (N = 782,092) and their parents. Rates of out-of-home placement of children with parents diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or unipolar depression, according to the criteria of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 8th revision (ICD-8) and ICD, 10th revision (ICD-10), were analyzed. The rates were compared with those of children with parents from the general population., Results: A parental diagnosis of schizophrenia was the most prominent risk factor for children placed outside the home, with an accumulated risk for being placed in care at some point during childhood-40% for children with mothers with schizophrenia and 20% for children with fathers with schizophrenia. Children of mothers (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 23.75; 95% CI, 20.94-26.93) and fathers (IRR = 7.85; 95% CI, 6.67-9.25) with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had the overall highest IRRs of placement in care. Having a mother with bipolar disorder was the second most prominent risk factor (IRR = 5.76; 95% CI, 4.50-7.36), followed by a maternal diagnosis of unipolar depression (IRR = 4.28; 95% CI, 3.73-4.90). Risks were especially high during the child's first year of life, indicating a critical period, especially for children with mothers with schizophrenia (IRR = 80.19; 95% CI, 68.09-94.43). Risks varied greatly with parents' socioeconomic factors in all diagnostic groups., Conclusions: Parental schizophrenia is a strong risk factor for placement of children in out-of-home care., (© Copyright 2015 Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.)

The article discusses a study that investigated to what extent behavioral disorders with postpartum onset are early manifestations of an underlying bipolar affective disorder. Follow up results of women who had postpartum onset of bipolar symptoms showed that 14% of the women converted to bipolar diagnosis within the 15 year follow up period. This suggests that presentation of mental illness in early postpartum period is a marker of possible underlying bipolarity.