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Maternal depression linked to childhood obesity
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Results from a study of low-income mothers show that children with mothers with moderate and severe depressive symptoms were more likely to be overweight or obese compared with mothers without depressive symptoms.
“We see a high prevalence of both depression and obesity in our practice and previous studies have shown a correlation,” Rachel S. Gross, MD, MS, FAAP, of Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in Bronx, N.Y., and assistant professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, said in a press release. “We wanted to formally investigate the link and expand our current understanding of maternal depression, the mother-child relationship and associated outcomes.”
Rachel S. Gross
The researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey of mother-child pairs (n=401) who received pediatric care at a community health center. The relationship between the maternal depressive symptoms — none, mild or moderate to severe — were compared with the child’s weight status, obesity-promoting feeding practices, such as mealtime practices and feeding styles, and activity-related behavior, such as sleep time, screen time and outdoor play time.
According to data, 94 mothers (23.4%) reported depressive symptoms. Of those, 63 (15.7%) displayed mild depressive symptoms and 31 (7.7%) had moderate to severe symptoms. Overall, mothers with moderate to severe depressive symptoms were more likely to have an overweight or obese child at age 5 years compared with mothers without depressive symptoms (adjusted OR=2.62; 95% CI, 1.02-6.70).
Additional data indicate mothers with mild depressive symptoms were more likely to have children who consumed sweetened drinks daily (adjusted OR=2.91; 95% CI, 1.57-5.37), did not eat breakfast regularly (adjusted OR=0.38; 95% CI, 0.17-0.87) and ate out in restaurants at least three times per week (adjusted OR=2.43; 95% CI, 1.09-5.41), compared with mothers without depressive symptoms.
Mothers with mild and moderate to severe depressive symptoms were also significantly less likely to set limits around eating, use food as a reward and model healthy eating, according to data.
Researchers wrote that mothers with mild and moderate to severe depressive symptoms were also significantly more likely to have children with shorter average daily sleep time and lower average daily outdoor play time.
“Our findings suggest that maternal depression plays a role in childhood obesity and supports the need for educational resources for low-income families to encourage active engagement and positive feeding practices,” Gross said. “In order to reverse the national obesity trend, we believe that providing access to mental health specialists in the pediatric primary care setting may represent an opportunity for early childhood obesity prevention. This could have a long-term impact on the obesity epidemic, especially among ethnic minority, low-income families, who are known to be at the highest risk for both early child obesity and maternal depression.”
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