Depression Treatment of Mothers' Improves Child Behavior

Treatment of maternal depression enhances their kids behavior and if the mothers don't get better, these kids' problems also worsens, says study.

"If you treat the mother when she is depressed and don't even go through the process of treating the children of these mothers, they still get better as their mothers get better," said Madhukar Trivedi, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and a co-author of the study.

"While the effect in the short term is clearly robust, the bigger issue is that this effect is long-lasting," he said.

"One year after their mothers' remissions, these children continued to show further improvement. This is almost unbelievable."

Moms and their children were followed as part of the nation's largest multisite clinical trial on treatments for depression, begun in fall 1999.

The latest findings also showed that children's improvement, in terms of both depressive symptoms and social functioning, was related to the time it took their mothers to get better.

Children whose mothers remitted - or recovered from all depressive symptoms - early within the first three months of treatment continued to show improvements in both symptoms and social functioning more than a year later.

If their mothers' remission took longer than three months, children a year later showed improvement in depressive symptoms, but not as much in social functioning.

The study was published recently in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Source: ANI

Depression

Depression is one of the most common mental disorders affecting approximately 340 million people in the world. No one is immune from depression - it occurs in people of all social classes, all countries and all cultural settings.

Quiz on Depression

The World Health Organization reports that depression is one of the main causes of disability affecting about 121 million people worldwide. More tragically, it claims around 850,000 lives every year. Hence, it is important that we understand this ...

Foods to Beat Depression

Depression can be a severe mental health problem that can lead to other health issues. Find top foods that can help fight depression.

Depressed Mums Increase Babies' Stress Hormones

Babies born to depressed mums have higher levels of stress hormones, as well as with other neurological and behavioural differences, a University of Michigan-led study has found.

Andropause / Male Menopause

Andropause or male menopause causing low libido in a man is due to decreasing level of male hormones, like testosterone. Symptoms of andropause are depression, irritability.

Bereavement

Bereavement is a word used to denote grief, pain and sadness following the loss of a loved one.

Dealing with Menopause symptoms through lifestyle changes

You can deal with menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, weight gain and forgetfulness by making simple lifestyle changes.

Holistic Management for Depression

Depression is a common disorder and many worldwide suffer from depression. Early recognition of symptoms and signs of depression can help in taking a holistic approach to the management of depression.

Pregnancy and Complications

In-depth guide for expecting mothers to overcome health complications related to early or late pregnancy. Anemia, urinary infection, diabetes, premature labor to name a few.

Tired All The Time

Tired All The Time (TATT) syndrome is not only about feeling of tired, however there are a host of other symptoms. Diabetes and food intolerance trigger TATT.

Tourette Syndrome

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder wherein the affected person makes repetitive and stereotyped involuntary movements, or noises, called ‘tics’.