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Stressed Pre-Birth? How the Foetus Is Affected by a Mother's State of Mind
Published in Mary Nolan, Shona Gore, Contemporary Issues in Perinatal Education, 2023
Low birth weight is often linked with prenatal stress and is also a predictor of illness decades later. Records of over 13,000 men born in Yorkshire showed that those with lower birth weight were more likely to suffer from conditions such as strokes, diabetes and heart disease as far ahead as 50 years of age (Barker et al., 2001). Indeed, if born less than 5.5 pounds, they had a 50% higher chance of developing heart disease, even accounting for socioeconomic circumstances.
Future directions
Published in Tony Cassidy, Stress, Cognition and Health, 2023
Stress also impacts on child development in that it has been causally implicated in both neurological impairment and delayed cognitive development (Bremne & Vermetten, 2001). Prenatal stress has been shown to be predictive of developmental problems and psychopathology (Doyle & Cicchetti, 2018). We have also seen from the discussion in the previous section how attachment problems in childhood affect adult social relations and social support, and attachment problems are an outcome of stress and trauma (Hostinar, Nusslock & Miller, 2018). This provides a potential area for future research and intervention, and some recent epigenetic research may help to elucidate the mechanisms involved. Epigenetic research has shown some evidence that early childhood stress can alter biological systems, increasing risk for negative mental health outcomes (Park et al., 2019). However, this research is in its infancy and requires further substantiation and clarification of the mechanisms (Park et al., 2019).
Overview of Perinatal Maternal Stress
Published in Rosa Maria Quatraro, Pietro Grussu, Handbook of Perinatal Clinical Psychology, 2020
Dawn Kingston, Muhammad Kashif Mughal
However, at times this research shows inconsistent results that are likely the reflection of the lack of a distinct conceptualization of stress in general (Peters, McEwen, & Friston, 2017), and in particular prenatal maternal stress. Several primary studies and reviews of “prenatal stress” operationalize stress as stress, depression, and/or anxiety, which only serves to cloud our ability to understand the unique contribution of prenatal stress. However, the correlations between stress, depression, and anxiety are low to moderate at best (Liou, Wang, & Cheng, 2014). In addition, recent research demonstrates that the relationships between stress, depression, and anxiety and child outcomes differ, as do the associations between various operationalizations of stress (e.g., as objective or subjective stress) and child outcomes. Different factors also predict subjective and objective stress (Kingston, Heaman, Fell, Dzakpasu, & Chalmers, 2012). Taken together, these findings suggest that stress is a form of distress that is distinct from depression and anxiety. Future research would benefit from distinguishing stress from depression and anxiety when studying the influence of maternal psychological distress on child outcomes, and when exploring the patterns (severity, duration) of maternal stress and its role in the risk, comorbidity, and treatment of depression and anxiety.
Psychological, endocrine and polygenic predictors of emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in a longitudinal birth cohort
Published in Stress, 2023
Thao Nguyen, Lea Zillich, Metin Cetin, Alisha S. M. Hall, Jerome C. Foo, Lea Sirignano, Josef Frank, Tabea S. Send, Maria Gilles, Marcella Rietschel, Michael Deuschle, Stephanie H. Witt, Fabian Streit
A significant association between the prenatal perceived stress of the mother and the change in the emotional well-being of the child (H3a) was found. Previous findings have shown that prenatal stress has an impact on children’s development and health (van den Bergh et al., 2020). Our findings suggest that prenatal maternal stress has an impact on children’s well-being several years later in life, particularly under stressful circumstances such as the periods studied here. Recent studies have examined the association between prenatal stress and children’s mental health starting in the pregnancy during the pandemic (Buthmann et al., 2022; Duguay et al., 2022; Provenzi et al., 2023). Therefore these studies are of children who are much younger compared to our present sample; our results from 7 to 10 year old children add to the literature. In order to examine how children’s development and mental health are affected by prenatal maternal health later in life, subsequent study waves should investigate this association in the present sample at later stages.
Perinatal mental health: how nordic data sources have contributed to existing evidence and future avenues to explore
Published in Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 2022
Maria A. Karalexi, Malin Eberhard-Gran, Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir, Hasse Karlsson, Trine Munk-Olsen, Alkistis Skalkidou
The FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study [www.finnbrain.fi] was established in 2010 to prospectively study the effects of early life stress (ELS) also comprising prenatal stress (PS), on child’s brain development and health [23]. This population-based pregnancy cohort with a primarily neurodevelopmental focus has collected a sample of 4000 families and eventually aims at identifying biomarkers related to PS and ELS exposures as well as trajectories for common psychiatric and somatic illnesses (e.g. depression, anxiety and cardiovascular illness). So far, more than 120 articles have been published and the next measurement point at child age of 9 years starts in autumn 2021. Current findings show that prenatal stress associates to a wide variety of child’s brain developmental and health outcomes [24–26].
Cortisol levels versus self-report stress measures during pregnancy as predictors of adverse infant outcomes: a systematic review
Published in Stress, 2022
Rafael A. Caparros-Gonzalez, Fiona Lynn, Fiona Alderdice, Maria Isabel Peralta-Ramirez
Prenatal stress can impact infants differently depending on whether it is a male or a female infant. In this review, it was reported that certain levels of psychological maternal stress were associated with having a male infant (Gao et al., 2021), while higher cortisol levels were found to be associated with having a girl (Romero-Gonzalez et al., 2020). In this regard, a previous review reported that low sex ratio at birth (SRB) (having more females) is associated with higher levels of stress during or before pregnancy (James & Grech, 2017). Maternal exposure to a natural disaster was also associated with a low sex ratio at birth (Torche & Kleinhaus, 2012). Although male infants showed higher birthweight (Bolten et al., 2011; Gilles et al., 2009 ; Hompes et al., 2012), female infants appeared to have a better neurodevelopment than males (Bergman et al., 2010). This finding is in line with a previous study reporting a higher impact of prenatal stress on male infants, including higher rates of dyslexia and autism (Bale, 2016). Nevertheless, a study in this review found that female premature infants exposed to high levels of stress while still in the womb obtained low scores in the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (Gao et al., 2021).