Intergenerational transmission of chronic physical disease via chronic mental disorders: The potential role of addictive behaviors

Abstract

There has been growing evidence of a link between chronic respiratory diseases, asthma in particular, and mental disorders among youth. The mechanism for this link remains unknown. Several studies have empirically addressed the question of this pathway, and accumulating results may shed new light on the nature of this association. The goal of the current paper is to provide an integrative summary of the literature to date and to present a new interdisciplinary hypothesis for one possible mechanism explaining the link between asthma and anxiety/depression among youth. This hypothesis posits that comorbid anxiety/depression and nicotine dependence among adults, may be one pathway leading to the comorbidity of asthma and anxiety/depression among youth. We propose this mechanism operates via exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and/or prenatal tobacco use, which confers an increased risk for asthma, and parental anxiety/depression which confers increased risk of anxiety/depression among offspring via familial transmission. We predict that further testing of this hypothesis will help to reveal the largely neglected problem of nicotine dependence especially among women — and the far-reaching impact of this addiction on the health of children.