Browsing by Author "Piri, Anna"

Objectives: Externalizing symptoms refer to outwards directed psychiatric symptoms, for example aggressiveness and repetitive rule breaking behavior. Childhood externalizing symptoms can have long lasting adverse consequences, which highlights the importance of studying possible risk factors, especially in early life. Prenatal depression is known to be harmful for the developing fetus, and previous studies have found that mother’s prenatal depressive symptoms predict children’s externalizing symptoms later in life. However, there is little knowledge of the factors that may underlie this association. The first aim of this study is to study the association between mother’s prenatal depressive symptoms and children’s externalizing symptoms in late childhood. The second aim is to study whether effortful control mediates the association between prenatal depressive symptoms and externalizing symptoms. Methods: This study is part of the PREDO study project, which aims to investigate the longitudinal associations between prenatal factors and children’s development and wellbeing. The sample of this study consists of 1674 mother-child pairs which were followed from pregnancy to the age of 7-11 years. Mothers assessed their depressive symptoms using The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), their children’s externalizing symptoms using Child Behavior Check List (CBCL), their children’s effortful control in infancy using Revised Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ-R) and in late childhood using Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ). The first research question was examined with linear regression analysis. The second question was examined with mediation analysis, in which effortful control was defined as the mean of effortful control assessed in infancy and in late childhood. Results and conclusions: This study found that mother’s prenatal depressive symptoms predicted children’s externalizing symptoms in late childhood. The association was independent of all the covariates and remained statistically significant after controlling for the level of mother’s current depressive symptoms. The mediation analysis found that effortful control partially mediated the association between prenatal depressive symptoms and externalizing symptoms: prenatal depressive symptoms were associated with children’s lower level of effortful control, which in turn was associated with higher level of externalizing symptoms. This study strenghtens previous literature about the impact of prenatal depression on children’s psychological development and mental health. In addition, this study offers new insight into the development of externalizing symptoms and their early risk factors.