Maternal Psychological Distress During Pregnancy in Relation to Child Development at Age Two

Abstract

Concern exists that a constellation of negative maternal emotions during pregnancy generates persistent negative consequences for child development. Maternal reports of anxiety, pregnancy-specific and nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were collected during mid-pregnancy and at 6 weeks and 24 months after birth in a sample of healthy women with low risk pregnancies. Developmental assessment and cardiac vagal tone monitoring were administered to 94 children at age 2. Higher levels of prenatal anxiety, nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were associated with more advanced motor development in children after postnatal control for each psychological measure; anxiety and depression were also significantly and positively associated with mental development. Mild to moderate levels of psychological distress may enhance fetal maturation in healthy populations.

Association between maternal antenatal depression and infant development: a hospital-based prospective cohort study

“…In previous studies examining the association of antenatal depression with infant development, Deave et al [6] used the EPDS and reported that antenatal depression has an adverse impact on infant development, whereas DiPietro et al [11]. used the BSID-II and reported a positive impact.…”

“…We assessed maternal depression between the second and third trimesters since this is the period of fetal development, and previous studies also assessed maternal psychological distress during this period [6,11,12]. The EPDS is a widely used self-rating questionnaire [18] and has been used during the antenatal period even though originally developed as a screening tool for maternal depression following childbirth [6].…”

“…Although the study population of the ALSPAC was large (9,244 women), the study had a number of limitations, such as the small number of depressed mothers and the use of maternal self-reporting to assess infant development [6]. DiPietro et al [11] used structured assessment to avoid the problem of self-reporting; however, the number of participants was much smaller (94), which limited the study's statistical power.…”

“…Although some studies have insisted that antenatal depression is related to lower infant development scores that indicate a developmental delay [6,10], others have related antenatal depression to higher performance in infant development tests [11] or have shown no correlation with infant development [12]. The ALSPAC study [6] and the study by DiPietro et al [11] demonstrated contradictory effects of antenatal depression, despite the fact that both studies were conducted using prospective birth cohorts and applied globally standardised measures, including the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) or the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for assessing maternal depression, and the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) or the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID-II) for assessing infant development. Although the study population of the ALSPAC was large (9,244 women), the study had a number of limitations, such as the small number of depressed mothers and the use of maternal self-reporting to assess infant development [6].…”

“…In these studies, researchers controlled for diverse maternal and infant factors, including antenatal and postnatal maternal psychological distress, maternal smoking during pregnancy, maternal age, maternal educational level, infant birth weight and gender and infant age at the time of developmental assessment [6,[10][11][12]. However, they did not consider differences in the rearing attitude of the parents or in the home environment.…”