Content area
Full Text
Among the various factors influencing child behavioral and developmental outcomes, parental functioning, parent-child relationships, and the home environment have consistently emerged as important variables. Being raised in a family where one or both parents experience mental health problems, particularly depression, can result in detrimental cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes in their children.1 Although genetic factors certainly contribute to this relationship, environmental factors also contribute substantially. Most research has looked at maternal depression, with little attention on paternal depression. Additionally, although parent-child influences are bidirectional and having a child with special needs or a difficult temperament affects the emotional functioning of the parent, it is believed that parental functioning more strongly influences child behavior and development than vice versa. Therefore, this article primarily focuses on the effects of maternal versus paternal depression upon the child, and the environmental factors that mediate this association, specifically, the quality of the parent-child relationship and the quality of the home environment. In order to understand the effects of maternal depression on children, it is first important to review adult depression in general.
DEPRESSION IN ADULTS
Depression is a highly prevalent disorder that affects 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men at some time during their lives.2 At any point in time, 5% to 10% of adults are clinically depressed, and another 10% to 15% experience subclinical levels or milder forms of depression.3 Approximately 75% of adults who experience a depressive episode have a recurrence, with up to 40% recurring within 2 years.4 Underrecognized, fewer than 25% receiving adequate treatment, depression affects all socioeconomic levels and ethnicities.5
Women are particularly vulnerable to depression, especially during the childbearing years.6 Recent media publicity has highlighted the relatively common experience of maternal post-partum depression. Up to 70% of women experience transient postpartum "blues," sadness, or emotional instability attributed to situational hormonal imbalances as well as the stress of new motherhood. Thirty percent remain depressed up to 6 months post-partum. Approximately 10% of new mothers are diagnosed with new onset clinical depression postpartum.7'8 More critical, in terms of its impact on children, is growing up in a setting of chronic or recurrent maternal depression.9
Depression exists on a spectrum from an acute single occurrence to a chronic state with symptoms varying in intensity....