Maternal depressive symptomatology and its association with early child development in socioeconomically deprived Mexican households

Abstract

We performed a cross-sectional analysis of 1060 mother-child dyads to study the association between maternal depressive symptomatology and child development among children aged 0 to 38 months from 24 communities of Oaxaca Mexico. Maternal depressive symptomatology was measured with the Center for Epidemiological Studies depression scale (CES-D). Child outcomes included WHO nutritional status indicators, a development evaluation test, and Bayley-III scales. We fitted logistic regressions for binary and linear regressions for continuous outcomes with multiple sociodemographic covariates. Children whose mothers had clinically significant depressive symptomatology (CES-D ≥ 16) had higher odds of stunting (covariate-adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.32 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04, 1.69) and lower socioemotional Bayley-III composite scores. Clinically significant maternal depressive symptomatology was associated with lower odds of normal neurodevelopment in male children (AOR = 0.60 95%CI: 0.41, 0.88) but not in females. Maternal clinically significant depressive symptomatology was associated with lower means of the Bayley-III language scores among children from Indigenous language speaking households. Public health interventions are needed to prevent maternal depression and suboptimal care practices among the most vulnerable. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT04210362. Study registration date 2019,07,14.