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Maternal depression affects child’s stress, immune biomarkers

Study findings published in Depression & Anxiety showed that a mother’s depression altered their child’s stress and immune systems intactness and social repertoire, decreasing their resilience and increasing their susceptibility to psychopathology.

“Maternal depression has been repeatedly linked with negative child outcomes, including increased psychopathology, poor socioemotional adaptation, externalizing and internalizing symptoms, emotion dysregulation and conduct problems,” Ruth Feldman, PhD, from the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzlia, in Israel, and Yale University, and colleagues wrote. “These findings suggest that maternal depression functions as a distinct early life stress that shapes children's stress response and physical health in ways that require much further research.”

Researchers examined how the combination of maternal and child's hypothalamic pituitary axis and immune systems mediated the effects of maternal depression on child psychopathology. Both mothers and offspring underwent psychiatric diagnosis, and the investigators followed 125 children from birth to 10 years, measuring mothers’ and children’s cortisol and secretory immunoglobulin (biomarkers of stress and the immune system); the mother-child interaction; and children’s externalizing and internalizing symptoms.

The researchers found that exposure to maternal depression impaired functioning of the child's immune system and stress response, which led to greater child psychopathology, according to a press release. The results showed that mothers with depression had higher cortisol and secretory immunoglobulin levels and exhibited more negative parenting, characterized by negative affect, intrusion and criticism. Children born to mothers with depression showed more Axis-I disorders, higher cortisol and secretory immunoglobulin levels and greater social withdrawal.

“We also found that the impairments to the child's stress response and immunity were shaped by similar effects of the depression on the mothers' stress and immune system and their consequent impact on reducing the quality of maternal caregiving,” Feldman said in the press release.

Using structural equation modeling to determine the paths leading from maternal depression to child externalizing and internalizing symptoms, researchers identified four paths:

• behavioral pathway, which showed higher maternal stress was tied to higher child stress and behavior problems;

• HPA-axis pathway, which showed augmented maternal and child's immune response were tied to child symptoms;

• immune pathway, which showed enhanced negative parenting predicted child social withdrawal and symptoms; and

• hormonal-immune pathway.

“Our findings show the complex effects of maternal depression on children's physiology, health and psychopathology and advocate the need for early interventions that specifically target maternal stress and enhance parenting behavior,” Feldman said in a press release. – by Savannah Demko

Disclosure: Healio Psychaitry was unable to confirm any relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.