The Cumulative Risk of Having a Family Member With a Diagnosed Mental Disorder: A Nationwide Study of Mental Disorders in Family Networks

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Mental disorders are associated with high costs—at the individual and societal level. But families also shoulder large costs in the form of caring for mentally ill family members. Yet, we do not know how common it is to have a family member with a mental disorder and whether this experience falls disproportionately on those who struggle with mental disorders themselves. To fill this gap, this study estimates the cumulative risk of having a family member with a diagnosed mental disorder.

Methods

The study uses full population Danish registry data to follow individuals born in 1970 and their family members (parents, siblings, partners, and children) between 1980 and 2018. The study uses nationwide records of outpatient and inpatient hospital treatment for psychiatric disorders and cumulative incidence functions to estimate the cumulative risk of having a family member diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Results

Among this cohort (N = 69,811) the cumulative risk of having a family member with a diagnosed mental disorder by age 49 is 51.4% [95% CI: 51.0%–51.8%]. Individuals diagnosed with a mental disorder themselves by age 49 (N = 9899) were 1.42 times more likely to have a family member with a mental disorder, and this difference grows for the cumulative risk of experiencing multiple family members with diagnosed mental disorders.

Conclusion

This study provides novel nationwide estimates of how common it is to have a family member with a diagnosed mental disorder. The cumulative risk of having a mental disorder severe enough to result in secondary care treatment and diagnosis is estimated at 13.9% among the 1970 birth cohort, but many more (just above 50%) experience mental disorders through their family network. These results highlight how many individuals and families experience (severe) mental disorders at close hand and show the disproportionate potential caregiving burden carried by individuals who are themselves diagnosed with a mental disorder at some point.

Summary.

• Significant outcomes

  • ○
    Following individuals born in 1970 until age 49, this study found that 51.4% had at least one close family member (parent, sibling, partner, or child) with a mental disorder while 13.9% were diagnosed with a mental disorder themselves.
  • ○
    Individuals, who were themselves diagnosed with a mental disorder at some point, were significantly more likely to have family members diagnosed with mental disorders.
• Limitations

  • ○
    Results should be considered lower‐bound estimates of the risk of having a family member with a diagnosed mental disorder, because the study (mainly) followed birth cohort 1970 up until age 49. During this period the prevalence of diagnosed mental disorders was lower than in more recent years.
  • ○
    Results were based on diagnoses from the Danish hospitals and thus did not include undiagnosed mental disorders or mental disorders only treated in primary care.

1. Introduction

Studies on family histories of mental disorders often have prognostic purposes [1, 2, 3, 4] or an interest in learning about the genetic causes of disorders [5, 6]. However, we should study mental disorders in family networks for at least two additional reasons.

First, having a family member with a mental disorder is often burdensome. Studies show that caring for a family member with a mental disorder has negative consequences for wellbeing and physical health [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] as well as labor market productivity [13]. Such second‐order consequences add individual and societal‐level costs to the already high cost of mental disorders [14], yet we have limited knowledge of how common it is to have family members with mental disorders.

Second, the treatment of mental disorders often relies on resources in the family to secure, optimize, or maintain care. But if family members also struggle with mental disorders, they will have fewer resources to take on this role as caregivers and facilitators of care. Although research has documented patterns of intergenerational transmission and assortative mating in mental disorders [15, 16, 17], we know little of the extent to which caregiving burdens fall disproportionately on individuals who struggle with mental disorders themselves.

Existing studies on the prevalence of family member mental disorder mainly estimate children's risk of growing up with parents with mental disorders. They estimate that between 12% and 39% of children experience parental or maternal mental disorder depending on the design and the measure of mental disorder [18, 19, 20, 21, 22]. However, the burden experienced when family members other than parents suffer from mental disorders may also be significant and costly, as indicated by studies of individuals who experience sibling, child, or partner mental disorders [8, 10, 11, 12]. Thus, more research is needed to fully understand the prevalence of family member mental disorder.

Our study contributes estimates of the cumulative risk of having at least one family member—a parent, child, sibling, or partner—with a diagnosed mental disorder (DMD) using the cumulative incidence function under the presence of competing risks (death and out‐migration). We estimated the overall risk and the risk dependent on whether the focal individuals are themselves diagnosed with a mental disorder at some point.

The study is the first to utilize nationwide full population data to estimate the risk of having a family member with a DMD across the range of mental disorders and across family members. The study follows the immediate family networks of one birth cohort born in 1970 until the year they turn 49 as their families evolve from being the family of origin to also including the family of destination during mid‐life.

The aim of the study was to provide the first nationwide estimates of the overall risk of having a family member with a diagnosed mental disorder and thus highlight how many of us experience mental disorders through our immediate family network.

2. Methods

2.1. Study Population

We used nationwide full population administrative data from Denmark. Since 1968, the Danish Civil Registration System has assigned all Danish residents a unique personal identification number. The personal identification number enables the linkage of administrative databases at the individual level and over time, as well as the linkage of family members.

Our study population included all individuals born in Denmark in 1970 who appeared in the population register in 1980 [23]. For each member of the study population—our focal individuals—we constructed yearly family networks from 1980 to 2018 consisting of parents, siblings (sharing at least one parent), children, and (married or cohabiting) partners recorded in the population register on January 1st each year. The family networks varied in size over the years, as children were born, partners split up, and parents died (as illustrated in Figure 1 which shows the family network over time for a fictional focal individual). Focusing on the 1970 birth cohort allowed for the longest follow‐up, as we followed individuals from birth until the year they turn 49 (i.e., before January 1st, 2019, which we for brevity refer to as “by age 49” in the study).

FIGURE 1.

Family network observed over time for a fictional focal individual. The figure illustrates the family network for a fictional focal individual (born in 1970) observed over time. Black lines indicate the years where a family member was linked to the focal individual and thus appeared in the focal individual's family network. Grey dotted lines indicate years where a family member was alive but did not appear in the focal individual's family network. The fictional focal individual in the figure has a mother (diagnosed with a mental disorder in 1990), a father (died 2013), a brother (born before 1980), a sister (born 1983), a child (born 1993) and two partners, which the focal individual was married to/cohabiting with from 1991 to 1996 (Partner 1) and from 1999 to 2011 (Partner 2). Note that Partner 2 was diagnosed with a mental disorder in 1997, but this was not counted as a family member DMD (indicated by the grey dot) in the main analysis, since the diagnosis occurred in a period, where Partner 2 was not part of the focal individual's family network. In a supplementary analysis we vary this condition and also include records of DMD occurring before/after family members entering/leaving the focal individuals family network, and in this analysis the grey dot is counted as family member DMD. Since registers on psychiatric disorders go back to 1970, first incidents of parent or sibling DMD occurring from focal individual's birth through 1979 are included in 1980, which is the first year with observed family networks, to capture all first incidents of family member DMD during the focal individual's childhood.

All information accessed through the registers is de‐identified and access was obtained through and regulated by Statistics Denmark. Danish law does not require informed consent for studies based on the administrative registers.

2.2. Mental Disorders

To assess the occurrence of DMD, we linked focal individuals and their family members to (a) The Danish Psychiatric Central Register, which contains information on all inpatient treatment at psychiatric departments in Denmark from 1970 to 1994, and (b) The Danish National Patient Register, which contains information on all hospital contacts, including both inpatient, outpatient, and emergency room contacts from 1995 and onwards [24, 25, 26]. We defined focal individuals and their family members as having a DMD if they appeared in either of the two registers with an ICD8 diagnosis (290–315, until 1994) [27] or ICD10 diagnosis (F00‐F99) for any psychiatric disorder. We measured family member DMD yearly, and we only counted records of DMD that occurred in years where the family member appeared in the focal individual's family network (illustrated by black dots in Figure 1). We vary this condition in a supplementary analysis.

2.3. Study Design

We followed a cohort of Danes born in 1970 until either death, emigration (permanent—i.e., not returning in the follow‐up period), first incidence of family member DMD, or the end of our follow‐up period (December 31st, 2018). We estimated the cumulative risk of experiencing family member DMD using the cumulative incidence function under the presence of competing risks (death and emigration) and summarized the cumulative risk by age 49. Disregarding these competing risks would overestimate the cumulative risk of having a family member with a DMD [28, 29]. In cases of temporary out‐migration (i.e., individuals returning to Denmark within the follow‐up period), individuals were retained in the analyses, but the emigration period was treated as an observation gap and thus did not contribute to time‐at‐risk.

Following birth cohorts through real time provides simple and transparent estimates of the cumulative risk experienced without assuming that estimated age‐specific risks apply to different or future cohorts. Furthermore, it ensures that we only follow cohorts where observed family networks are reasonably complete. Presenting birth cohort (or stratum) specific estimates of the cumulative risk is recommended by Hansen and colleagues [30], who demonstrated the risk of inflating disease risk estimates when applying cumulative incidence estimators to pooled data with staggered entry and fixed end of follow‐up in periods with calendar trends in the disease (see Supplement A in Supporting Information for discussion of the study design and methods).

2.4. Statistical Analysis

Data were analyzed from June 2022 to August 2025, and the cumulative incidence functions were estimated non‐parametrically using the command stcompet in Stata 17 [31] accounting for competing events (death and permanent emigration). We estimated the cumulative risk of any family member DMD regardless of the treatment type (i.e., inpatient or outpatient) and for inpatient treatment separately. Furthermore, we estimated the cumulative risk of experiencing parent, sibling, partner, or child DMD and of experiencing 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5+ family members with a DMD by age 49. Finally, we estimated all cumulative risks separately by whether the focal individual had been diagnosed with a mental disorder anytime between birth and age 49 years (N _focalDMD = 9899 and N _nofocalDMD = 59,912). In this final analytical step, we made no assumptions about the temporal ordering or causal relationship between focal and family member DMD and simply described the differences in risk between the two groups.

3. Results

The study population consisted of 69,811 focal individuals, for whom the cumulative risk of having a DMD themselves by age 49 was 13.9% [95% CI, 13.6%–14.1%, see Table eC1 in Supporting Information]. During our observation period from 1980 to 2018, 2914 individuals left due to permanent out‐migration, and 1894 individuals died. 7321 individuals migrated temporarily and returned to the at‐risk population (with on average 2.7 gap years). When estimating the cumulative risk of any family member's DMD, time‐at‐risk was 2,069,941 person‐years. During the observation period, the average number of unique family members observed per focal individual was 7.33.

3.1. Risk of Family Member Diagnosed Mental Disorders

The cumulative risk of having at least one family member with DMD by age 49 was estimated to be 51.4% [95% CI: 51.0%–51.8%], and 29.6% [95% CI: 29.3%–30%] were estimated to have at least one family member who received inpatient treatment for their DMD (Table 1). Thus, focal individuals' risk of having a family member with a DMD was much higher than their own risk of having a DMD (which is 13.9% cf. above).

TABLE 1.

Cumulative risk of family member diagnosed with a mental disorder by age 49.

	# first incidents	Cumulative risk by age 49
		CR	95% confidence interval
Family member DMD	37,076	0.514	0.510	0.518
Family member DMD with inpatient treatment	21,065	0.296	0.293	0.300
N individuals	69,811

Note: Table shows the estimated cumulative risk (CR) of experiencing at least one family member with a DMD by age 49 with 95% confidence intervals and number of first incidents of family member DMD occurring by age 49 in the columns. The rows show estimates for different types of family member DMD: cumulative risk of any DMD regardless of treatment received and cumulative risk of DMD with inpatient treatment.

Having a parent with a DMD was the most common (estimated at 24% [95% CI: 23.7%–24.4%], Figure 2A), followed by the risk of having a sibling (22.1% [95% CI: 21.8–22.4]) or a child (19.1% [95% CI: 18.8%–19.4%]) with DMD. 8.3% [95% CI: 8.1%–8.5%] of focal individuals had a partner with DMD.

FIGURE 2.

Cumulative risk of diagnosed mental disorder among family members by age 49. Figures show the estimated cumulative risk of experiencing (A) at least one parent, sibling, partner, or child with a DMD by age 49, and (B) one, two, three, four or five and more family members with a DMD by age 49. Estimates are also shown in Tables eB1 and eB2 in Supporting Information.

29.8% [95% CI: 29.4%–30.1%] were estimated to have only one family member with DMD (see Figure 2B), whereas 13.3% [95% CI: 13.1%–13.6%], 5.1% [95% CI: 5.0%–5.3%], 1.9% [95% CI: 1.8%–2.0%], and 1.1% [95% CI: 1.0%–1.2%] were estimated to have two, three, four, and at least five family members with DMDs, respectively.

3.2. Risk of Family Member Diagnosed Mental Disorder by Focal Individuals' Diagnosed Mental Disorder

Among the focal individuals who had a DMD by age 49, the cumulated risk of having any family member with DMD was 69.1% [95% CI: 68.2%–70%] compared to 48.6% [95% CI: 48.1%–49%] among focal individuals with no DMD (Table 2). Individuals with DMD were thus 1.4 times more likely to have experienced family member DMD compared to individuals with no DMD and 1.7 times more likely to have experienced family member DMD with inpatient treatment (46% [95% CI: 45%–47%] vs. 26.9% [95% CI: 26.6%–27.3%]). The absolute number of first incidents of family member DMD was naturally larger among focal individuals who were not diagnosed with a mental disorder (30,143 vs. 6933) since they constitute the largest group.

TABLE 2.

Cumulative risk of family member diagnosed with a mental disorder by age 49 by focal individual's own diagnosed mental disorder.

		No focal DMD				Focal DMD			Comparison
	# first incidents	CR	95% confidence interval		# first incident	CR	95% confidence interval		Diff.	95% confidence intervals		Ratio
Family member DMD
Any	30,143	0.486	0.481	0.490	6933	0.691	0.682	0.700	0.205	0.195	0.216	1.423
w. inpatient treatment	16,478	0.269	0.266	0.273	4587	0.460	0.450	0.470	0.190	0.181	0.200	1.707
N individuals		59,912				9899

Note: By presence of focal individual's own diagnosed mental disorder. Table shows estimated cumulative risk of family member DMD by age 49 separately for focal individuals who had a DMD themselves prior to age 49 and focal individuals who did not. The last two columns compare the cumulative risks for the two groups; t‐tests are used to test whether the differences between groups are statistically significant, with accompanying 95% confidence intervals.

The cumulated risk of having a parent with DMD was estimated at 34.9% [95% CI: 33.9%–35.8%] for focal individuals with DMD compared to 22.3% [95% CI: 21.9%–22.6%] for those without DMD (Figure 3A). Similarly, the cumulated risk of having a sibling or child with DMD was 1.6–1.7 times higher among focal individuals with DMD. The cumulated risk of having had a partner with DMD was twice as high (14.6% [95% CI: 13.9%–15.3%] vs. 7.3% [95% CI: 7.1%–7.5%]) for focal individuals with DMD.

FIGURE 3.

Cumulative risk of DMD among family members by presence of own DMD by age 49. Figures show the estimated cumulative risk of experiencing (A) at least one parent, sibling, partner, or child with a DMD by age 49, and (B) one, two, three, four or five and above family members with a DMD by age 49 separately for focal individuals, who had a DMD themselves prior to age 49, and focal individuals who did not. Estimates are also shown in Tables eB3 and eB4 in Supporting Information.

Among focal individuals with a DMD, 29.7% [95% CI: 29.4%–30.1%] had only one family member with a DMD, and the risk was similar and not statistically significantly different from individuals without a DMD (30.1% [95% CI: 29.1%–31%], Figure 3B). Yet, when we focus on the risk of having multiple family members with DMDs, focal individuals had risks that were 1.6–4.9 times higher. For example, focal individuals with a DMD had a 19.7% [95% CI: 18.9%–20.5%] risk of having two family members with DMDs, whereas this risk was only 12.3% [95% CI: 12%–12.6%] among focal individuals with no DMD. Similarly, the risk of having four family members with DMD was 4.8% [95% CI: 4.3%–5.2%] among focal individuals with DMDs and only 1.4% [95% CI: 1.3%–1.5%] among focal individuals without DMDs.

3.3. Supplementary Analysis

The analysis presented above does not consider instances of DMD for, for example, partners, where the diagnosis and treatment only occurred before/after entering/leaving a relationship with the focal individual. However, mental disorders may be burdensome both prior to and after contact and treatment with the psychiatric system. We conducted a supplementary analysis, which also counted records of DMD that occurred within 5 years before and after family members entered or exited the family network of the focal individuals as family member DMD (see Partner2 DMD in Figure 1 as an illustration of this). In the supplementary analysis (Table eC2 in Supporting Information), the cumulative risk of experiencing partner DMD was 14.9% [95% CI: 14.7%–15.2%] compared to 8.3% in the main analysis. The estimate of the cumulative risk of any family member DMD was 55% [95% CI: 54.6%–55.4%] compared to 51.4% in the main analysis.

A factor that is likely to influence results is family and fertility patterns, and we thus conducted a supplementary analysis, where only years with family members are counted as years at risk. These findings (presented in Table eC3 in Supporting Information) show that when excluding individuals and years with no family member, the estimated risk of family member DMD was 55.4% [95% CI: 55%–55.7%] compared to 51.4% in the main analysis. The largest divergences from the main estimates were for partner and child DMD (15.4% [95% CI: 13.8%–17.1%] and 28% [95% CI: 27.6%–28.4%] compared to 8.3% and 19.1% in the main analysis), since these are the family formation patterns with the greatest selection occurring and where family ties are present for a shorter part of the observed lifespan.

In our analysis of differences across focal DMD status, we defined focal DMD as having a DMD at any point before age 49. We thus made no assumptions about the (often complex) temporal ordering or causal relationship between focal and family member DMD. As a supplementary analysis (Tables eC4 and eC5 in Supporting Information), we also estimated the subhazard ratio of having a family member with a DMD with focal DMD as a time‐varying predictor (using command stcrreg in Stata 17, which takes account of competing risks). This subhazard ratio was 1.658 [95% CI: 1.591–1.728]. Additionally—since the temporal ordering can go both ways—we estimated the subhazard ratio of focal DMD with family member DMD as the time‐varying predictor. Here the subhazard ratio was estimated at 2.32 [95% CI: 2.225–2.419]. These results show the increased risk of family member DMD for focal individuals already diagnosed with a mental disorder, and the increased risk of focal DMD among individuals who have had a family member diagnosed with a mental disorder.

To examine developments over time, Table eC6 in the Supporting Information presents cumulative risks of family member DMD by age 19, 29, 39 for cohorts born in 1980, 1990, and 2000, and shows higher risks among cohorts born after 1970 (although differences are not as pronounced for DMD with inpatient treatment). Additionally, in Supporting Information) that pooled cohorts and estimated cumulative and lifetime risks based only on a more recent period (from 2000 to 2018) resulted in an estimated cumulative risk of family member DMD by age 49 of 59.9% [95% CI: 59.7%–60.2%] (see Table eA1 in Supporting Information), which is consistent with an increasing risk across birth cohorts. But as described in Supplement A in Supporting Information, these results are vulnerable to mechanics inflating risk estimates.

4. Discussion

The evidence presented above shows that the experience of having family members diagnosed with mental disorders (DMD) is pervasive. For individuals born in 1970, more than half (51.4%) had experienced family member DMD by the age of 49, and almost a third (29.6%) had family members who received inpatient treatment for their DMD. The experience of family member DMD was particularly pronounced among individuals who were themselves diagnosed with a mental disorder at any point before age 49. Given the current increase in diagnosed mental disorders in Denmark as well as in most Western countries [32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37], the experience will be even more common in the future, as also suggested by our supplementary analysis on increasing cumulative risks in younger cohorts.

The finding that more than half of the study population—and most likely a growing share of the population—experiences family member DMD highlights that this phenomenon merits attention in several dimensions:

First, studies show that individuals with mental disorders experience stigma and discrimination in various domains [38, 39, 40], and that this stigma rubs off onto their family members, thus exacerbating the burden associated with caregiving or preventing the family members from getting the support they need [41, 42, 43]. But according to our findings, the risk of family member DMD is pervasive, genetic disposition or not. This is an important message in all situations where individuals with mental disorders or their family members are stigmatized or discriminated against.

Second, the high and proposed increasing prevalence of family member DMD, combined with existing knowledge on the negative consequences of caring for a family member with a DMD, implies that we should find ways to help individuals with such caring burdens to not only reduce the individual level costs, but also the overall societal level cost of these high prevalence rates.

Third, given that family member DMD is nevertheless more common among individuals who already have or develop a DMD, society's expectation that family members should contribute to secure, optimize, or maintain care during the treatment of mental disorders could be a challenging strategy. Existing programs for family members and carers often include psychoeducation to enhance carers' knowledge about the disorders, coping strategies, and available resources, and such programs are recommended and practiced around the world with benefits to carers [44, 45, 46, 47]. But there may be substantial barriers to obtaining access to or benefiting from these programs, and particularly so for family members who themselves struggle with mental disorders.

4.1. Limitations

The current findings are conservative and lower bound estimates of the proportion of the population experiencing family member DMD for three key reasons. First and foremost, providing estimates based on birth cohorts significantly lowers the estimates compared to period cohort estimates (as we show and discuss in Supplement A in Supporting Information), because birth cohort estimates are historic and do not predict or extrapolate from current or recent age‐specific risks, which are still increasing [37]. We would therefore expect future cohorts, who live a greater share of their lives in periods characterized by high and increasing rates of diagnosed mental disorders, to have higher risks of family member DMD—as suggested by the estimates for birth cohorts 1980, 1990, and 2000.

Second, our main analysis only considered cases of family member DMD, where the diagnosis occurred in the years when the diagnosed family member appeared in the focal individual's family network. Our supplementary analysis showed that when we included instances of DMD occurring up to 5 years before/after entering/leaving the family network, the cumulative risk estimates of family member DMD by age 49 increased to 55%. This strategy does, however, involve a risk of overcounting family member DMD and including cases which did not impact the focal individual.

Third, our study relied on administrative registers with diagnosed mental disorders, which means that we only captured mental disorders that resulted in treatment at Danish hospitals. Hence, the study did not capture the overall prevalence of mental disorders—and family member mental disorders—completely. Particularly, mental disorders of mild or moderate severity were most likely captured less adequately, because a larger proportion of individuals suffering from these disorders may abstain from seeking treatment or receive treatment in the primary sector only. Additionally, data accessibility limitations mean that we cannot observe outpatient treatment for mental disorders prior to 1995, which is likely to lead to underestimation of the overall risk. For family members mostly observed after 1995 (i.e., partners and children), this issue is not as pronounced, and for DMD with inpatient treatment, the data is available for the entire observation period, meaning that these estimates are not affected by unobserved DMD at the hospital level.

A further limitation of the study is that it does not investigate or disentangle the complex temporal and (potential) causal relationships between family members and own mental disorders. Family members or focal individuals could both develop mental disorders as a result of caring for mentally ill family members or as a result of shared genetic or environmental risk factors, and this study is unable to separate the two.

4.2. Strengths

Relying on administrative register data is also one of the strengths of the study, since the registers were based on clinical assessment of all mental disorders for the full population diagnosed in secondary care (with several key diagnoses having been validated with good results [48, 49, 50, 51]). Crucially, the administrative register data also enabled us to construct family networks and observe the diagnosis history of the entire family networks over a lengthy period, which would be very cumbersome to measure in a survey design with a great risk of recall bias.

Another strength of this study is that it focuses on DMD across four types of family members. Most studies on family member DMD have focused on the risk of experiencing parental mental disorders. The focus on parental mental disorder is fully merited, and studies do indeed show increased risk of adverse outcomes associated with growing up with a parent who suffers from mental disorders [52, 53, 54, 55, 56]. Yet, having a sibling, partner, or child who suffers from mental disorders may also be burdensome and have significant adverse consequences [8, 10, 11, 12]. Parents and partners may spend significant amounts of time and energy caring for children and partners, impeding on their working life and general well‐being, and siblings may experience a strained home environment with limited resources available to the children in the family without apparent mental disorders. The full picture is thus needed to show how common it is to have a family member with a diagnosed mental disorder and to highlight the size of the group that carries the second‐order costs of mental disorders.

Although also highlighted as a limitation, the conservative nature of the estimates represents a significant strength by providing explicit lower bounds and thus highlighting that the experience of family member DMD is at least as common as the estimates provided (and most likely growing).

5. Conclusion

To our knowledge, this study is the most comprehensive study of the risk of experiencing a family member diagnosed with a mental disorder. The study highlights that the experience of a family member diagnosed with a mental disorder is pervasive and that the burden of caregiving disproportionately falls on those who themselves have a mental disorder at some point. The implications of the study are threefold. First, the societal cost of mental disorders may be severely underestimated since a significant part of the population experiences family member mental disorders, which are associated with costs and adverse consequences for health and productivity. Second, programs for carers and family members of individuals with mental disorders should be particularly aware that the burden disproportionately falls on those with mental disorders themselves, who may have fewer resources to provide care. Third and finally, these estimates highlight that more than half of us experience (severe) mental disorders at close hand in the family network—and most likely more, given that the estimates are conservative—and the dissemination of this knowledge may serve to destigmatize mental disorders.

Author Contributions

Anne Sofie Tegner Anker had full access to the data in the study and takes full responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Concept and design: Anne Sofie Tegner Anker and Signe Hald Andersen. Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data: Anne Sofie Tegner Anker and Signe Hald Andersen. Drafting the manuscript: Anne Sofie Tegner Anker and Signe Hald Andersen. Critical review of the manuscript: Anne Sofie Tegner Anker and Signe Hald Andersen. Statistical analysis: Anne Sofie Tegner Anker. Obtained funding: Anne Sofie Tegner Anker and Signe Hald Andersen.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Supporting information

Data S1: acps70041‐sup‐0001‐supinfo.docx.

Anker A. S. T. and Andersen S. H., “The Cumulative Risk of Having a Family Member With a Diagnosed Mental Disorder: A Nationwide Study of Mental Disorders in Family Networks,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 153, no. 1 (2026): 44–53, 10.1111/acps.70041.

Data Availability Statement

Statistics Denmark houses the data used for the current study on secure servers and the data are not the property of the authors. Access to the data for research purposes can be obtained by applying to Statistics Denmark but conditions apply.