Higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms prenatally and postpartum have been linked to the thinning of the cerebral cortex in young children, new research shows. The findings suggest that maternal depression in pregnancy could adversely affect a child’s brain development, underscoring the importance of treating depression in pregnant women, lead author Catherine Lebel, Ph.D., University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, told Medscape Medical News. “We found an association between brain structure in the kids and maternal depressive symptoms, so, while we cannot say the depressive symptoms cause this, there is definitely something different structurally in the brains of kids whose moms were more depressed,” Dr. Lebel said.
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