 Mother's emotional and mental health predict child's development
Source: Reuters by Anne Harding Date: 05/14/08
Evaluating the emotional health and social connectedness of pregnant women may help determine if their children will need extra help to meet developmental
goals later on, Canadian researchers say.
If
children get this assistance early, there's a good chance they will do
just fine, Dr. Suzanne C. Tough of the University of Calgary in
Alberta, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.
But Tough and her team found that more than half of the three-year-olds
in their study who were identified as being at high risk for
developmental problems had never been referred for assessment to see if
they actually did have speech and language delays.
"We miss these children when our early intervention can be most
effective," the researcher continued. Kids with mild to moderate delays
who could make "huge strides" without extensive help are actually the
most likely to fall through the cracks, she added.
To investigate early risk factors for developmental problems, which
can, in turn, increase the likelihood that a child will fail in school
and have behavioral issues, Tough and her colleagues looked at 791
mothers who had participated in prenatal care study and their children,
who were now pre-school-age. All of the women had uncomplicated
pregnancies and deliveries.
While 11 percent of the children were gauged to be at high risk for
developmental problems, just 43 percent of these high-risk kids had
been assessed. Those who were born preterm were more likely to have
been identified as at risk, as were children who had undergone hearing
tests and those with vision problems.
Children were more likely to be at high risk for developmental problems
if they were male, had ear infections, came from a low-income
environment, or had a mother with poor mental health during the
prenatal period and after the child was born. Problems typically
included depression, a history of abuse and a poor level of contentment.
Fifty-three percent of the kids who met each of these criteria were at
high risk. However, when the mother's poor mental health was removed
from the equation, the risk fell by 30 percent, to 18 percent.
"The big surprise to me in this data was just how important maternal mental health can be," Tough said.
The women typically didn't have serious psychiatric problems, she
added, but were simply in poor mental and emotional health and
frequently lacked good connections in their community and to friends
and family.
Tough and her team are now evaluating whether a program that brings
pregnant women together to help them build social networks will improve
children's outcomes.
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