Maternal mental health and nutritional status of six-month-old infants

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To analyze if maternal mental health is associated with infant nutritional statusat six month of age.METHODS: A cross-sectional study with 228 six-month-old infants who used primary health careunits of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Southeastern Brazil. Mean weight-for-length and mean weightfor-age were expressed in z-scores considering the 2006 World Health Organization referencecurves. Maternal mental health was measured by the 12-item General Health Questionnaire. Thefollowing cutoff points were used: ≥ 3 for common mental disorders, ≥ 5 for more severe mentaldisorders, and ≥ 9 for depression. The statistical analysis employed adjusted linear regressionmodels.RESULTS: The prevalence of common mental disorders, more severe mental disorders anddepression was 39.9%, 23.7%, and 8.3%, respectively. Children of women with more severe mentaldisorders had, on average, a weight-for-length 0.37 z-scores lower than children of women withoutthis health harm (p = 0.026). We also observed that the weight-for-length indicator of childrenof depressed mothers was, on average, 0.67 z-scores lower than that of children of nondepressedwomen (p = 0.010). Maternal depression was associated with lower mean values of weight-foragez-scores (p = 0.041).CONCLUSIONS: Maternal mental health is positively related to the inadequacy of thenutritional status of infants at six months