The Link Between Mothers’ and Children’s Mental Health
August 6th, 2009 |
A GoodTherapy.org News Summary
While here have been scores of studies on the causes and effects of post-partum depression, a researcher from the University of Queensland recently set out to uncover the effects of mothers’ mental health during the long process of child rearing. Focusing her research on a study performed at the Mater University of Pregnancy, the researcher found that those mothers who exhibited signs of mental health concerns were significantly more likely to raise children with behavioral and other issues, while those with recurring issues such as feelings of depression or anxiety showed a dramatic increase in these rates. The effective treatment of mothers experiencing mental health issues may in fact prove valuable for more than just the client herself.
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8 comments so far
this goes back to the idea that systems therapist have known for a long time, change the system and the parts of the system will change accordingly. It’s also something many child therapists are aware of.
the difficulty in all of this is getting the parent, who often sees the child as the problem, to do their own therapy.
so is this suggesting that nature still plays a role in this, or is it simply that this is the environment that the child is raised in and this is all he knows?
Our parents make us who we are. The attitudes and behaviors that we learn from them are most likely the ones that are going to stay with us for a lifetime. That does not make it difficult to believe at all that a mother’s mental health status would affect that of her children. But then again you get those crazy off the wall cases of everything seeming perfectly normal at home and then the kids just end up out of control. Those are te ones that always just leave me scratching my head and saying where did that come from.
This is common sense. We learn from our parents and emulate them until we’re old enough to choose our own way forward. Of course we learn from them how to act. Kids can’t differentiate until much older what is normal behavior and what isn’t. The saying ‘a chip off the old block’ didn’t come out of thin air yesterday.
That’s stacking the decks against them poor kids from the start. They don’t choose what mother they get.
Women are crazy anyway.
Only the ones that married you Marty LOL.
That was a very general remark about women. Move with the times, dude! That isn’t cool.
Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Truth hurts, girl. I know it. I grew up with three of them and they were all nuts.
I ain’t moving with the times. The times should have stayed right where they were. They were just fine when mothering was all a woman did.
And will they be studying the effects of a father’s mental health on a child too? Or is all the guilt and responsibility going to be squarely placed on mom’s shoulders as usual regarding how kids turn out?