Grant: Project Grant

Each year, approximately 13% of North American women experience depression and/or anxiety during pregnancy and a third are treated with an antidepressant that alters levels of serotonin, a key neurotransmitter during fetal brain development. We know that these antidepressant cross the placenta and the fetal blood brain barrier, leading to critical unanswered questions about the long-term developmental effects associated with prenatal antidepressant exposure. Over the past 18 years our research has examined women treated with SRI antidepressants during pregnancy. We have studied development and behavior in infants, children and adolescents of depressed mothers and reported novel findings showing that in utero SRI exposure is associated with altered brain development in infancy and behavioral disturbances, such as increased anxiety in young children. While population-level data have the advantage of large sample sizes, the level of detail regarding educational and behavioral outcomes across childhood has generally been limited. There is an urgent need to study long-term outcomes using objective non-categorical behavioral and educational data. These data are now available in British Columbia. Thus we aim to use these population-based administrative datasets to assess whether maternal mood during pregnancy and/or its treatment with an SRI antidepressant is associated with an increased risk for delayed language and cogonitive development during childhood, as well as social and emotional development and wellbeing during early (age 5) and middle childhood (age 9). We will assemble a population-based cohort including all children born in British Columbia between 2000 and 2012 and follow them until 2016. We will include individual-level behavioral, education and health data on children in kindergarten and at Grade 4 to assess their well-being and development. Our research results will be used to minimize the incidence of adverse outcomes for mothers and their children.