New research shows a suicide attempt by a parent increases a child's risk of attempting suicide five-fold.
Past studies have suggested that suicidal behaviors can be inherited, but have not determined the pathways through which these behaviors are transmitted through family lines, the JAMA Network Journals reported.
To make their findings researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center followed parents' with mood disorders and their children for an average of six years.
The study looked at 701 children (ages 10 to 50 years old) of 334 parents with mood disorders, 57.2 of which had attempted suicide.
Out of the 701 offspring looked at in the study, 44 (6.3 percent) had made a suicide attempt before the study began and 29 (4.1 percent) attempted suicide during the study's follow-up.
The data suggests a direct link between a parent's suicide attempt and suicide attempt risk in their offspring. This correlation remained true even after the researchers took into account outside factors such as " a history of previous suicide attempt by the offspring and a familial transmission of mood disorder," the researchers reported.
"Impulsive aggression was an important precursor of mood disorder and could be targeted in interventions designed to prevent youth at high familial risk from making a suicide attempt," the study concludes.
Suicide rates in the U.S. are currently at about 6.4 for every 100,000 individuals, accounting for about 39,518 deaths per year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and a Young Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and was published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
