Maternal Depression, Childhood Resting‐State Brain Connectivity, and Adolescent Depression During the COVID‐19 Outbreak

Adolescents of mothers with a history of depression are at increased risk for developing depression themselves. These adolescents may have been especially vulnerable to depression under conditions of stress, such as the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the complex processes involved in the transmission of maternal depression risk to adolescent offspring in the context of stress, we examined potential mediating and moderating factors that link maternal depression history and offspring depressive symptoms, including resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) and mothers' depressive symptoms, in 85 adolescents during the pandemic. Adolescents' prepandemic rs-FC between the posterior and anterior cingulate cortices (PCC-ACC) moderated the association between maternal depression history and adolescents' symptoms during the pandemic, such that maternal depression history predicted adolescents' symptoms only in youths with heightened PCC-ACC rs-FC. Mothers' depressive symptoms during the pandemic mediated and moderated the link between maternal depression history and adolescents' symptoms. Mothers with a history of depression had greater depressive symptoms early during the pandemic, which were further associated with offspring depressive symptoms. Additionally, maternal depression history predicted depressive symptoms in adolescents whose mothers had lower depressive symptoms during the pandemic. Findings speak to the mediating and moderating processes in the transmission of maternal depression risk to adolescent offspring in the context of the pandemic.