Depression treatment could treat more than just the sufferer

Recently I read an article on the affects of a Mother's depression on childrens injuries. The article in ScienceDaily says, infants and toddlers whose mothers are severely depressed are almost three times more likely to suffer accidental injuries than other children in the same age group, according to a new study.

The study's findings, published May 14 in the Advanced Access edition of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, suggest that proper treatment for depression would improve not only the mothers' health, but the health of young children as well.

A likely cause for the link between severe maternal depression and young children's injury risk is that chronically depressed mothers may not appropriately safeguard the physical environments that children engage in. Another cause may be that symptoms of depression include inattention, poor concentration and irritability, which might lead to poor or inconsistent supervision and enforcement of safety-related rules.

Another article in ScienceDaily claims Young children whose mothers are depressed are more prone to behavioural problems and injury, suggested by US research published in Injury Prevention.

Children whose mothers scored persistently high marks on the depression scales were more than twice as likely to have been injured as those whose mothers had a low rating. And children whose mothers had a high rating were significantly more likely to have behavioural problems and to "act out." Boys were more at risk of this than girls.

And in a third article, A study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and nine other U.S. centers, evaluated the effects of maternal depression on children's development.

Found was that depressed mothers in general were less sensitive to their children, that their children displayed poorer verbal and language skills and that those children showed more problem behaviors. Children whose mothers were more sensitive, however, did better on our measures and behaved better regardless of their mothers' level of depression.

What this all leads down to is just how important mental and psychological health is to our over all health and the health of those closest to us. There is no doubt that a mother and child have a closer relationship than most, but in most cases I wouldn’t be surprised if a husband and wife living in close quarters experienced this same kind of affects. We need to begin taking seriously the effects of our psychological health and what it is doing to us. For the most part parents and adults alike believe they can handle it themselves and this is prove it is not worth handling when it is affecting those closest to you.