Associations Between Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Diathesis Factors in Families with Young Children Having Developmental Delay or Disability

Purpose:

  Physical and mental well-being of mothers best supports healthy growth in children. Maternal depressive symptoms are negatively associated with children’s physical growth, emotional growth, and even their school performance. Although a young child with a developmental delay (DD)/disability needs mother’s close attention and day-to-day support, his/her mother tends to have higher depressive symptoms, which impedes her from providing the best support for her child. Having additional children with DD/disability may be associated with higher maternal depressive symptoms. The purpose of this study is to examine associations between maternal depressive symptoms and number of children with DD/ disability accounting for maternal diathesis factors (predisposing conditions that may lead to negative maternal/family outcome) and family stress factors.

Methods:

This study is a secondary analysis of the pooled baseline data from three intervention studies conducted by Beeber et al.; The “Wings” Depressive Symptom Intervention for Latina Mothers, Reducing Depressive Symptoms in Low-Income Mothers, EHS Latina Mothers: Reducing Depressive Symptoms and Improving Infant/Toddler Mental Health (n=376). Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed with CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) 20 items. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between maternal depressive symptoms and number of children with DD/disability, categorized as zero vs. one vs. two or more; first, adjusting for family stress factors and then further adjusting for maternal diathesis factors. In addition, a post hoc Tukey-Kramer comparison of the least square means were examined among the number of children with DD/disability. 

Results:

In the model including family stress factors, we found a significant test for linear trend in the mean for maternal depressive symptoms across the number of children with DD/disability (F[1]=5.14, p=0.024). Lower family conflict (F[1]=18.28 p<0.001) and the presence of child’s medical condition (F[1]=8.85, p=0.0031) were significant correlates of higher mean maternal depressive symptoms.

Maternal depressive symptoms tend to be lowest among households in which there are no children with DD/disability (M=22.73), slightly increase for households with one child with DD/disabilities (M=23.46), and are highest in households with more than two children with DD/disabilities (M=28.61).

In the model adjusting for both family stress factors and maternal diathesis factors, the trend in depressive symptoms across the number of children with DD/disabilities was attenuated. Maternal depressive symptoms tend to be higher for households with two or more children with DD/disabilities compared to households with zero to one child with DD/disabilities.   

Conclusion:

Mothers who have multiple children with DD/disabilities require extra support for their mental health so that they can best attend to their children’s developmental needs. Other potential intervention targets would be conflict management at the family level, reduction in maternal depressive symptoms as well as mothers’ empowerment and self-support, and managing the children’s medical needs.