A preliminary study of subclinical panic symptom elevations among adolescent offspring of parents with PTSD who smoke

Abstract

Objectives: Research has linked parental post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and parental smoking to a wide array of psychological and physical health concerns among offspring. Furthermore, the combination of parental anxiety psychopathology generally, along with smoking, has been linked to elevated adolescent panic symptomatology. However, no research has examined the unique and interactive associations between parental PTSD and smoking in terms of offspring panic. Method: The current study sought to begin to address this gap in the literature by examining adolescent-reported panic symptom levels as a function of parent-reported PTSD and current smoking. Results: Among 25 dyads (M_{parent age} = 42.92 years [SD = 6.71]; M_{offspring age} = 15.80 years [SD = 1.04]), adolescent offspring of smokers with PTSD reported significantly higher panic symptoms compared with all other combinations of these factors after controlling for multiple theoretically relevant and empirically associated covariates. Supporting model specificity, parental PTSD and smoking were not related to adolescent depression or other types of anxiety. Conclusions: These results are consistent with research linking the combination of parental anxiety psychopathology and smoking to offspring panic generally, and parental PTSD and smoking to panic symptoms specifically. Research on possible mechanisms of intergenerational transmission as well as replication and extension of these findings is now needed.

• Panic
• smoking
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• adolescent
• intergenerational transmission

Notes

1. Analyses of variance were also conducted without covariates to check if results were due to a suppression situation related to covariates (Tzelgov & Henik, 1991). This approach did not change the pattern of results. Moreover, groups were compared in terms of parental gender, education, race, marital status, ethnicity, and family income. No significant group differences were observed (p values ranged from 0.22 to 1.00) and therefore these factors were not included as covariates.