Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Up to 20% of mothers experience depression during pregnancy and up to 5% of all children are born each year exposed to an antidepressant medication (totalling approximately 20,000 births/year in Canada). Antidepressants readily cross the placenta and reach the developing fetus, but it is unknown whether an early exposure to antidepressants will affect the child's emotional and behavioural regulation. In order to make an informed decision on antidepressant use during pregnancy, it is important to understand how prenatal exposure to antidepressants influences early brain development and whether it affects stress regulation, mental health and behaviour during childhood. I will study patterns of stress regulation and behaviour at 6 and 12 years of age and determine whether these outcomes predict mental health outcomes (anxiety and depression) in youth (15-18 years) of mothers treated with an antidepressant in pregnancy. I will use data derived from a cohort of mothers and children who had been followed for the last 18 years, since their mother's second trimester. I will also use British Columbia population-wide data from all mothers and their children born in BC between the years 2000-2011 (~480,000 children, 24,000 with antidepressant exposure). This study will allow us to use advanced methods to model how a child's behaviour and stress responses at different time points (infancy, 3, 6 and 12 years) are related to anxiety at 15-18 years. Stress response will be estimated from the stress hormone cortisol and heart rate. To study outcomes using population data, we will use advanced techniques to study patterns of behaviour (machine learning) that will generate predictive models of mental health outcomes in adolescence and distinguish how much of adolescent behavior is associated with prenatal antidepressant exposure and how much is associated with mother's depressed mood. Our studies should help improve the mental health of mothers and their children.