In summary, our results show that (a) the maternal social defeat paradigm may reliably imitate human depressive-like symptoms; (b) the maternal rats experiencing SDS pass their anxiety- and depressive-like behaviours on to their offspring; and (c) the abnormal behaviours observed in the offspring may involve HPA axis regulatory hormones, the monoaminergic system, and changes in transcriptional regulation factors such CREB and BDNF. The gene discussed is CREB1; the disease is Anxiety.