# The temporal alignment of mental health consultations across family members: a study of Norwegian adolescents, their parents, and siblings

## TL;DR

This study finds that when Norwegian adolescents seek help for depression, their parents and siblings also show increased mental health consultations around the same time.

## Contribution

The study reveals temporal alignment in mental health help-seeking among family members, suggesting intra- and intergenerational spillovers.

## Key findings

- Adolescents' depression consultations are linked to simultaneous increases in mental health consultations for parents and siblings.
- Siblings show a short-term and long-term rise in mental health consultations compared to peers in unaffected families.
- Events like parental breakup and unemployment do not explain the observed patterns of increased consultations.

## Abstract

Mental health problems among adolescents have become more prevalent in recent years. Parents’ and siblings’ mental health might be affected by living with a depressed adolescent. This study examines how the mental health of family members develops in the years before and after an adolescent seeks help for depression.

Unique Norwegian register data that cover the full population are used to estimate models with individual fixed effects. The development in the probability of mental health consultations for parents and older siblings in families with a second-born adolescent seeking help for depression from a GP for the first time is compared to the respective development in families where the second-born adolescent has not had such health care consultation.

Results indicate that adolescents’ depression consultations are associated with a simultaneous increase in mental health consultations in parents and siblings. Mothers and fathers are affected similarly, although the effect seems to be short-lived. Siblings experience a short-term increase in mental health consultations, in addition to a steeper long-term increase across the observation period, compared to peers in families where the second-born adolescent does not seek help for depression. Events that might affect the mental health of multiple family members simultaneously, specifically parental breakup and unemployment, did not explain the observed patterns.

Help-seeking for mental health problems is temporally aligned across family members. Intra- and intergenerational spillovers might contribute to this.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00127-024-02803-1.