Research paperThe mother, the infant and the mother-infant relationship: What is the impact of antidepressant medication in pregnancy
Section snippets
Background
Pregnancy and the first year of life is recognised as one the most sensitive and crucial developmental periods for influencing lifelong health and wellbeing (Gluckman and Hanson, 2006; Lewis et al., 2014). Exposures and environmental influences during the perinatal period from conception to 12 months have the potential to impact on health across childhood and beyond (Lewis et al., 2014).
Evidence supports the treatment of mild to moderate depression with psychological therapies as first line for
Materials and methods
This is a prospective cohort study of 485 pregnant women in Melbourne, Victoria, recruited before the 20th week of pregnancy, and followed up during third trimester of pregnancy, at the birth of their child, and six months, 12 months postpartum. Women were recruited between September 2012 and May 2017. Study participants comprised three groups: women taking antidepressant medication in pregnancy (Antidepressants; n = 90), non-medicated women who met diagnostic criteria on a structured interview
Cohort socio-demographic characteristics
Table 1 displays the sociodemographic characteristics of the sample across the three groups: control women, women with depression and women taking antidepressants. At recruitment, women in the cohort ranged between 19 and 48 years of age (M = 31.91, SD = 4.73) and there was no significant difference between the three groups.
Antidepressant use
Ninety women (18.6% of the total cohort) reported taking antidepressants during pregnancy. Of these 90 women, 86 (97%) reported taking antidepressant medication in early
Conclusions
When clinicians undertake an assessment or management plan for perinatal mental health there is frequently consideration of the three domains of maternal mental health and wellbeing, parenting and the mother-fetal/infant relationship and the health and wellbeing of the fetus/infant as part of any comprehensive assessment or management plan (Galbally et al., 2013). This study has examined outcomes from antidepressant exposure over these three domains that comprise perinatal mental health and
Role of the funding source
The organizations that funded the study did not contribute to any of the following elements of the paper: study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, the writing of the report, and the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Financial support
This study is supported through the 2012 National Priority Founding Round of Beyondblue in a three-year research grant (ID 519240) and a 2015 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grant for 5 years (APP1106823). Financial support has also been obtained from the Academic Research and Development Grants, Mercy Health and Centre for Mental Health and Well-Being, Deakin University.
Ethical standards
Ethical approval for the project was granted by the Mercy Health Human Research Ethics Committee, Ethics Project Number: R08/22. The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Megan Galbally: Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Stuart J. Watson: Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Philip Boyce: Funding acquisition. Thinh Nguyen: Formal analysis. Andrew J. Lewis: Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Methodology.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank those who have supported the development of MPEWS including Marinus van IJzendoorn and Michael Permezel. The authors also thank staff, students and volunteers on the MPEWS study as well as study co-ordinators: Nicole Brooks and Tina Vaiano for their contribution to MPEWS. We are also sincerely grateful to the study participants who have contributed a substantial amount of time to participating in this study.
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