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ADHD

ADHD: Could maternal depression be the cause?

By BS MediaTwitter Profile | Published: Monday, 08 January 2018
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In this article, we discuss new evidence in support of a significant link between depression during gestation and an accrued risk of attention deficit disorder disorder in the child.

A new study uncovers golf links between maternal depression and attention deficit disorder.

Attention deficit disorder disorder (attention deficit disorder) is primarily characterised by two categories of behavioural problems: inattentiveness and disorder or impulsiveness.

attention deficit disorder is now one of the most common paediatric neurodevelopmental disorders, poignant up to 7.2 percentage of all children.

The condition raises the likeliness that the child will face difficulty at school and later in life. besides, some evidence suggests that attention deficit disorder increases mortality tax.

And worryingly, according to some reports, the incidence rate of attention deficit disorder is steady rising. Although better detection tax surely play a part in the increase, this cannot explain the size of growth.

Therefore, the race is on to understand what causes attention deficit disorder and, significantly , whether or not it can be prevented.

Maternal depression and attention deficit disorder

A group of researchers recently investigated the role of depression during gestation in attention deficit disorder risk. Although scientists have explored a range of potential causes of attention deficit disorder, maternal depression has received comparatively little attention.

The thin literature on this interaction has been inconclusive. nevertheless, the authors of the current study believe that this lack of clarity mightiness be due to method flaws.

Such flaws include the fact that earlier studies only quantified depression at one or two points in time during gestation, rather than throughout. besides, the personal effects of depression after gestation were not taken into account.

Another potential issue in previous work is explained by the authors. "The studies failing to account for maternal pre-gestation fleshiness and common gestation disorders," they explain, "which in addition to increasing the child's attention deficit disorder risk, may often besides accompany maternal depression."

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The team designed a study to open the question and address the issues defined above. So, in this experiment, depressive symptoms were measured biweekly from 12 weeks pregnant until delivery.

Children were followed until the age of 3–6. At this point, the scientists registered inside information about the mother's depressive symptoms following gestation. information regarding pre-gestation fleshiness, high blood pressure disorders during gestation, and physiological state polygenic disorder were besides collated.

Study sheds light on depression-attention deficit disorder link

In all, 1,779 Finnish mothers and their one child, born 2006–2010, were enclosed in the study. Their assessment began at the twelfth week of gestation, and the final assessment took place when the child was an average of 3.8 years old. The researchers' collection were recently published in the journal PLOS One.

Following analysis, the authors found that the proportion of "children with clinically significant attention deficit disorder symptoms were higher in the group of women who had systematically high depressive symptoms throughout gestation."

In short, attention deficit disorder was more normally found in the offspring of depressed mothers, and their symptoms were significantly worse.

If the mother experient depressive symptoms after birth, this added to the personal effects of depressive symptoms during gestation: there was a further accrued risk of attention deficit disorder and more pronounced symptoms.

Contrary to expectations, maternal fleshiness and gestation disorders — so much as maternal polygenic disorder — did not influence attention deficit disorder outcomes in the offspring. likewise , when depressive symptoms were split into trimesters, there were no time-specific personal effects. This was because, in general, those mothers who were depressed during gestation were depressed throughout.

What mightiness cause this interaction?

The study's collection are clear cut, but as the authors write, "An apparent study limitation is that we are not able to specify the brain structural or functional nor biological or behavioural underlying mechanisms."

This will be the next step, and a number of potential mechanisms have not yet been projected. For example, earlier studies showed that maternal depressive symptoms, secretion hydrocortisone levels, or some mightiness alter a baby's brain structure and the way that it is connected.

Depression during gestation has besides been coupled with an increase in placental hormone sensitivity, which could have a wide array of personal effects on foetal development.

Inflammation could besides play a role; studies have found that inflammatory cytokines correlate with maternal depressive symptoms.

It will take time to unravel how and why maternal depression is coupled to attention deficit disorder, and it is likely to be a complex picture involving all of the processes above and more. nevertheless, for now, the current collection can still be clinically useful.

As the authors write in their conclusion, "[P]reventive interventions focusing on maternal depressive symptoms may benefit not only maternal but offspring well-being."

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