Parental depression is associated with various mental health conditions and other difficulties in offspring. Nevertheless, some individuals do not develop mental health difficulties or do so only temporarily. It indicates that certain protective factors may buffer risks associated with being raised by a depressed parent. Individual, family, social, and lifestyle protective factors were identified in previous research to be relevant for mental health resilience in adolescence. However, as people mature, different protective factors may be relevant in young adulthood - a peak period for the emergence of mental health problems.

Therefore, this study will aim to understand if various protective factors could explain why some individuals do not develop mental health problems or recover from them despite being at higher risk due to genetic and environmental influences. Furthermore, we will aim to test the causal role of the identified protective factors and potential biological, psychosocial and environmental mechanisms that could explain protective factors’ joint contribution to mental health resilience in children of depressed parents.

We expect to identify modifiable protective factors that could be targeted to develop prevention and intervention strategies that could potentially interrupt the transmission of mental health problems from parents to offspring. In this way, the research could improve the lives of both depressed parents and their offspring.