Maternal Depression Im act on Infant Development during the Second Year of Life (Córdoba, Argentina)

Abstract

Introduction: the presence of maternal depressive symptoms can cause a lack of responsiveness to children's needs, generating a more insecure bond that affects child development. Materials and methods: a prospective longitudinal study was carried out with descriptive-correlational data analysis in mother-child dyads assessed in the presence of maternal depression with: 1) babies between 2-6 months and 2) between 17-24 months of age the psychomotor, cognitive and linguistic development was evaluated during the second year of the child's life. Results: 71% of the mothers who presented postpartum depression continued to show symptoms during the second year of infant life. the 33% of depressed mothers showed inadequate stimulation of their children. an altered development was found in the mental sphere in 42% of the children and in the psychomotor sphere in 33% of the children of depressed mothers. Child language development was also affected by the presence of maternal depressive symptoms, with less vocabulary and sentence production being observed. Discussion and conclusion: the importance of generating preventive tasks both for the early detection of women at risk of suffering from depression and related To intervention strategies on the mother-baby bond and early stimulation are discussed.