By Vanessa Chalmers Health Reporter For Mailonline
Published: 17:24 GMT, 19 March 2019 | Updated: 17:27 GMT, 19 March 2019
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Almost one in three children are living with a parent suffering emotional distress - the highest proportion on record, data shows.
The Public Health England figures show a strong link between unemployment and the likelihood of living in a home with a distressed parent.
Emotional distress is a snapshot that indicates mental health problems, such as anxiety or depression.
Growing up around parents in this situation can be potentially dangerous for the child's mental health later in life, experts say.
Almost one in three children are living with a parent suffering emotional distress - the highest proportion on record, data from Public Health England shows
The analysis by Public Health England found that 29 per cent of children in the UK are living with at least one parent reporting symptoms of emotional distress.
This is the highest figure since records began in 2010.
The data was taken from the Understanding Society study of around 40,000 households in the UK for 2016 to 2017.
Mothers are much more likely to report emotional distress, with more than one in five (22.3 per cent) children living in a household where the mother was suffering.
The figure for mothers is up on 20.2 per cent the year before and the highest on record.
It compares with around one in eight (12.1 per cent) children living in households where it was the father who was distressed.
In some households, both parents are reporting emotional distress.
Around half of all children (50.6 per cent) living in families where neither parent was in work had at least one parent reporting symptoms of emotional distress.
Nine per cent of those born in the early 1990s had suffered depression by 14, against 15 per cent for those born at the Millennium, research has found.
Rates of self-harm went up from 12 to 14 per cent between the two groups.
Teenagers today drink less, take fewer drugs, and are less likely to be vandals or violent than their elders of just a decade before.
But instead they are more likely to suffer from depression or obesity, to sleep badly, or
