Treating mom's depression may help children: study
Posted on: Tuesday, 21 March 2006, 10:10 CST
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Curing depression in mothers can also rid their children of problems such as anxiety and aggressive behavior, a study said on Tuesday.
"The bottom-line message is: Mothers who are depressed, go get treated for your depression. It will help not only you, but your child," said A. John Rush of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, a co-author of the study.
A parent's depression is known to put stress on the entire family, often causing children to develop their own mental health problems, said the study published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study looked at 151 mothers who were treated across the country, and one child in each of their families between 2001 and 2004.
It found that one third of the children of mothers who were successfully treated with medication saw their problems disappear. When mothers were not successfully treated, the rates of problems in the children rose.
"To our knowledge, this is the first published study to document prospectively the relation between remission of a mother's depression and her child's clinical state.
"These findings ... suggest that an environmental influence (the impact of maternal depression remission) had a measurable impact on the child's psychopathology," the study said.
"Our studies suggest that a reduction in stress associated with maternal remission may reverse the long-standing symptoms in children who are likely to be genetically vulnerable" to problems of their own, it added.
Women were the targets of the study because the rate of depression is higher in women than men, particularly in women of childbearing age, the study said.
Source: REUTERS
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