Original ArticlesTiming and Chronicity of Maternal Depression Symptoms and Children's Verbal Abilities
Section snippets
Methods
Data were drawn from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, whose protocol was approved by the Quebec Institute of Statistics and the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre ethics committees. Participants were recruited via the Quebec Birth Registry using a stratified procedure based on living area and birth rate. The initial sample included n = 2120 infants born in Quebec in 1997-1998. Our analysis sample included n = 1073 mother-child pairs for whom data was available for MDS at
Results
Our analysis sample (n = 1073) significantly differed from our initial cohort sample (n = 2120). Mothers included in our analysis sample were less likely to have male children (50% in analysis sample vs 57% in initial sample, χ2 = 9.31, P = .002), be unemployed (45% vs 55%, χ2 = 22.39, P < .0001), have a high school diploma (14% vs 23%, χ2 = 13.50, P = .004), be single parents (14% vs 22%, χ2 = 35.36, P < .0001), report higher MDS (1.41 vs 1.68, F = 14.47, P = .0001), and to come from a low
Discussion
The objective of this study was to model the association between the timing and chronicity of MDS in early childhood (first 5 years of life) and children's long-term verbal abilities (5-10 years). In our population-based birth cohort (n = 1073), 37.8% of mothers reported elevated MDS (eg, experiencing few symptoms a lot of the time or many symptoms at least some of the time over the past week) at least once during the first 5 years of the target child's life. However, only children exposed to
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Supported by the Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux Québec, the Lucie et André Chagnon Foundation, the Ministère de la Famille Québec, and the Institut de la Statistique du Québec. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.