Anxiety disorders in mothers and their children

Schreier et al ¹ have found that the risk of anxiety disorders in children is increased when mothers have specific anxiety disorders such as social phobia and generalised anxiety disorder. They also claim that their findings confirm and extend the findings of Bijl et al. ² However, Bijl et al did not demonstrate that parental anxiety symptoms were significantly related to psychiatric disorders in the children, including anxiety disorders. In addition, anxiety disorders in the children were not related to most parental psychiatric symptoms. Moreover, their patients were older (adult children) than those in Schreier et al's study and we are not certain whether it is possible to compare these two different populations.