Mothers' mental health - how does it affect their children?

Dr Belinda Lloyd from the University of Queensland has been looking into the links between mothers' mental health and their children's. She used data from the Mater-University Study of Pregnancy - a long-term study of more than 7,000 mothers and their children born at Brisbane's Mater Hospital between 1981 and 1983. Dr Lloyd found that children whose mothers experienced mental-health problems as their children went through adolescence were more likely to have behavioural and mental-health problems themselves. Children whose mothers had recurrent mental-health problems were also at greater risk of behavioural and psychological difficulties. However, the study found that antenatal and postnatal depression alone had no negative impact on children.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159191.php