University of Virginia Health System

U.VA. STUDY LINKS POVERTY, MATERNAL DEPRESSION WITH SLOWED EARLY DEVELOPMENT

Higher income seems to compensate for developmental problems seen in young children with depressed mothers, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia Health System.

The study found that boys and girls from poor families with depressed mothers had delays in cognitive and motor development. But the adverse effects of maternal depression were generally smaller in middle-class households, said principal investigator Stephen M. Petterson, director of poverty studies at the U.Va. Southeastern Rural Mental Health Research Center.

The study, published in the November/December issue of the journal Child Development, also suggests that chronic depression in mothers has a greater effect than short-term depression on early childhood development.

Previous studies have shown that both maternal depression and poverty have a negative effect on young children, slowing their cognitive development and leading to behavioral problems.

The study included data on 7,677 mother-child pairs collected at birth in 1988 and at age three in 1991. Depression was more common in poor mothers in the study, affecting 24 percent, compared with 14 percent of mothers not living in poverty.

Maternal depression and poverty jeopardize the development of very young boys and girls and, to a certain extent, affluence buffers the deleterious consequences of depression, Petterson said.

However, girls differed from boys in relation to this finding. Among the group of more affluent families, girls whose mothers suffered from moderate depression scored significantly lower on cognitive measures than did girls whose mothers were not depressed.

Although not conclusive, the results suggest that affluence does not buffer the negative effects of severe maternal depression for both boys and girls, the researchers said.

The authors also found that living in a household below the poverty level had a greater effect on cognitive development than on motor development. In fact, scores for motor development were actually lower for boys from the more affluent families than for those in poor families, Petterson said.

The study was funded with a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Child Development is the bimonthly, peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.

November 19, 2001