Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Depressed maternal mood is common during and after pregnancy and can persist for several years. For some children, such exposure alters stress regulation, which increases risks for emotional, social and behavioural development. In this study I have two aims. First, I will determine how patterns of maternal depressive symptoms extending from mid-pregnancy to 6 years postpartum are associated with a child's response to a stress challenge at 6 and again at 12 years. Second, I will determine whether a mother's treatment for depressed mood during pregnancy with an antidepressant changes the impact of exposure to maternal depressed mood on child stress response. This study will use an existing cohort where we studied mother's mood and antidepressant medication use during pregnancy and across a number of time-points up to 12 years after birth. We will use these measures of maternal depressed mood to identify groups that reflect increasing, decreasing, stable, or low levels of depressed symptoms extending from pregnancy to 6 years. Then we will look at whether a child's responses obtained from cortisol levels (a stress hormone found in saliva) and measures of heart rate activity before, during and after a standard stress challenge are associated with a particular group of mother's mood symptoms. Finally, we will examine whether a child's prenatal exposure to an antidepressant changes associations between child stress reactivity and membership in one of these groups of maternal depressed mood. The project proposed in this application will advance our understanding of how longitudinal early life exposure to maternal depressed mood symptoms is associated with stress reactivity at two developmentally critical times in childhood and whether this risk is reduced by antidepressant treatment during pregnancy.