Maternal Anxiety and Depression Can Greatly Impact Child's Behavior

Maternal anxiety and depression may not just be impacting the mother. It could also impact her children. Scientists have discovered that these symptoms could increase the risk of emotional and disruptive problem behaviors in children as early as 18 months of age. The findings reveal the importance of catching these symptoms in mothers as early as possible in order to help prevent long-term effects in children.

In order to examine how a mother's anxiety and depression could impact her children, the researchers examined Norwegian mothers' self-reports of their own mental health and their children's problem behaviors, both disruptive and emotional. These reports encompassed five different ages from early childhood (18 months) to early adolescence (12.5 years). Questionnaire data from the adolescents were from 14.5 years and 16.5 years old.

So what did the researchers find? It turned out that when the mother reported high levels of anxiety and depression symptoms early in the children's lives, the children had a higher risk of emotional and disruptive problem behaviors during their childhood. In addition, the children had a higher risk of reporting depressive symptoms during adolescence. This association between maternal and later child problem behaviors was present as early as 18 months old in the children.

"This is particularly important when the mother has reported high anxiety and depressive symptoms in the child's first two years of life," said Wendy Nilsen, one of the researchers, in a news release. "These children had a higher risk of more depressive symptoms in adolescence. Problem behaviors in early life were also associated with later problems in adolescence."

In fact, the study highlights the importance of research that follows children and their families from early childhood to adolescence.

"In this way we can gain knowledge about early traits of children and families that increase the likelihood of later mental health problems," said Nilsen in a news release. "This is important knowledge."

The findings are published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.