Recovering from depression may take longer if a person was physically abused as a child or had parents with addictions, the results of a new study indicate.

Canadian researchers followed the progress of over 1,100 depressed adults. The participants were followed up every year until remission occurred, for up to 12 years.

"Our findings indicated that most people bounce back. In fact, three-quarters of individuals were no longer depressed after two years," the team from the University of Toronto said.
However, the study found that some people recovered at different rates and ‘early adversities had far-reaching consequences'.

"The average time to recovery from depression was nine months longer for adults who had been physically abused during their childhood and about five months longer for those whose parents had addiction problems," the researchers explained.

They emphasised that while many studies have shown that childhood abuse and parental addictions can make people more vulnerable to depression, these findings ‘highlight that these factors also slow the recovery time among those who become depressed'.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

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