Abstract
Objectives
To examine the relation between perinatal depression at child age 1 year and behavioral issues and altered social functioning at school age.
Methods
The Future of Families (formerly Fragile Families) and Child Wellbeing Study longitudinal cohort age 9 nationally representative urban sample was used to examine associations between maternal depression at child age 1 and child behavior and social functioning at age 9 (n = 2,305 children and their mothers). Measures included the Composite International Diagnostics Interview (depression), Child Behavior Checklist total score (child behavior problems) and social function subscale. Clinical significance of child behavior problems and social function problems were determined by normed T-scores. Analyses included chi square, t-tests, and linear regression using SAS 9.4 Survey procedures.
Results
Higher household income was associated with lower behavior problem scores (F = 8.76, p < 0.0001, R2 = 0.07. School-aged children whose mothers had major depression at child age 1 (10.8%) were more than twice as likely to have clinically significant behavior problems (OR 2.46, p < 0.0001) than children whose mothers did not have depression (4.1%). Further, children with depressed mothers were more than twice as likely to have clinically significant social function problems than children whose mothers were not depressed (OR = 2.09, p < 0.0001).
Conclusions for Practice
Children whose mothers were depressed at child age 1 have higher risk of having behavior problems and poor social functioning at age 9. Early and repeated maternal depression screening is needed to treat the disease sooner and attempt to avoid these outcomes.
Significance
Prior literature on long-term child effects of perinatal depression has been mixed and unclear, likely due to methodological and sampling limitations including small sample sizes. The present study provides evidence of a longitudinal association of perinatal depression with childhood behavior problems and social functioning that persist into middle childhood in a large, nationally representative sample.
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Data Availability
FFCWS data are publicly available at https://ffcws.princeton.edu/.
Code Availability
Data cleaning, recoding, and analysis code is available upon request by contacting the corresponding author.
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Funding
The first author is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Number T32DA035200 (PI: Rush). The FFCSW (formerly Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study) was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421, as well as a consortium of private foundations. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
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Blair, L.M., Wheeler, E. & Hutti, M.H. Social and Behavioral Problems in School-Aged Children After Maternal Postpartum Depression: A Secondary Analysis of Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Matern Child Health J 27, 1081–1088 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03645-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03645-0