A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry reports that a child’s depression and poor behavior improves substantially when the mother is successfully treated for depression. According to Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, a coauthor of the study, “If you treat the mother when she is depressed and don’t even go through the process of treating the children of these mothers, they still get better as their mothers get better.”

And they stay well. One year after a mom seeks treatment the kids still show improved behavior.

Figures compiled by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) report that about 2.5 percent of children and up to 8.3 percent of adolescents in the US suffer from depression.

According to Psych Central Senior News Editor Rick Nauert, “The impact on a child as a result of a mother’s illness cannot be underestimated. In this study, researchers learned that children’s improvement, in terms of both depressive symptoms and social functioning, is associated with the time it took their mothers to get better.”

Continue reading… »