Stress during pregnancy and a mom’s own adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may be associated with higher risk of mental health problems for their children, according to a recent ECHO Cohort study led by Shaikh Ahmad, PhD, Alexandra Sullivan, PhD, and Nicole Bush, PhD of University of California, San Francisco, and Marie Churchill, MS and Rosa Crum, MD, MHS of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The global rise in pediatric mental health problems has highlighted the importance of identifying factors that may affect children’s mental health. Previous research has suggested that maternal stress—both adverse experiences during the mother’s own childhood and stress during pregnancy—may affect child mental health. To better understand how these exposures affect child mental health, researchers collected information from over 6,000 mothers and their children enrolled in 34 ECHO Cohort Study Sites across the United States.
Key Takeaways include:
- Mothers’ own ACEs and experiences of stress during pregnancy were each independently associated with a higher risk of mental health problems in their children, suggesting that maternal stressors during each period may have contributed to the child’s risk in a potentially accumulative manner.
- These effects on children included both internalizing (e.g., anxiety, depression) and externalizing (e.g., ADHD, behavior problems) mental health issues.
- The effects of maternal ACEs and pregnancy stress on child mental health problems were similar for boys and girls and were seen throughout childhood and adolescence.
“Using a large and diverse sample, this study highlights the potential two-generational benefits of early screening and intervention related to maternal stress and adversity—not only in improving maternal health, but also in reducing mental health problems in offspring,” said Dr. Ahmad.
Additional research could help researchers identify other factors that may influence the risk of child mental health problems (e.g., paternal ACEs) and factors that could improve support for pregnant women.
This collaborative research, titled “Maternal Adverse Childhood Experiences and Prenatal Stress: Intergenerational Transmission and Offspring Mental Health in the ECHO Cohort,” is published in Psychological Medicine.