Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

This study addresses how maternal depression influences child behavioural problems. Women have double to triple the prevalence rates for 12 month depression compared to men, one in five women can expect to develop clinical depression at some time in her life and about 10 % of women will experience postpartum depression in the months following the birth of a child (Akhtar-Danesh & Landeen, 2007). Maternal depression is associated with adverse outcomes across the lifespan and although some of these outcomes are well researched findings in areas such as the development of behavioural issues in early childhood are unclear. The varied results are likely due to a failure to identify and understand potential factors that contribute to this relationship. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to examine the factors that contribute to the relationship between maternal depression and early childhood behavioural problems. Child coping, reactivity and parenting style will all be examined as contributing factors to this relationship. Home visits will be conducted with 100 mother-child dyads (50 clinically depressed mothers and 50 control mothers). All dyads will participate in a series of frustrating tasks together. I will assess child coping, reactivity and parenting style through videotapes in the lab. I will assess child behaviour through observation at the visit as well as through questionnaires. This line of research is particularly important, given how little is known about the factors that contribute to the relationship between maternal depression and child behavioural problems. The work will potentially inform early interventions for at-risk children designed to interrupt the transgenerational transmission of a psychiatric disorder.