Mental disease postpartum - Social competence, work efficiency and behaviour problems in eight-year-old children

Abstract

In a longitudinal study, children of 14 mentally ill women, admitted to hospital within six months after delivery, were compared to children of 23 women who had been somatically ill postpartum, and to a matched sample of children of 22 healthy women. Also, children in the somatic sample were compared to another matched sample of healthy children (n=41). Questionnaires measuring social competence, work efficiency and child behavior problems were given to parents and teachers, when the child was eight years old. Children in the psychiatric sample were rated, by teachers as well as by parents, to have low work efficiency as compared to the matched healthy psychiatric controls. In the somatic sample, teachers rated the children to have low work efficiency as compared to the matched healthy somatic controls. In all samples, teachers rated the children as being less prosocially oriented, as having less social initiative and less work efficiency as compared to parent ratings. Children who had been separated from their mother during her stay in hospital did not differ from children who had not been separated on any of the scales, neither on teacher nor on parent ratings. A possible interpretation of our data is that maternal mental illness during a sensitive period for the development of secure attachment may have long term effects on the child's development.