Posted on: July 1, 2008
Happy Parents, Safer Kids
By Melanie Wanzek
CTW Features
Seeking proper help for depression not only improves your health but also can keep bumps off your children as well.
According to a recent study by University of Alabama at Birmingham psychologist David Schwebel, Ph.D., infants and toddlers – from birth to three years – whose mothers were severely depressed were almost three times more likely to suffer accidental injuries than other children of similar age. This link remained constant through ranges in socio-economic status, parenting styles and the child’s sex, temperament and behavior.
Schwebel says reasons for these results are likely to draw from chronically depressed mothers being unable to safeguard the physical environments of their children or give them the attention they need. Poor concentration and irritability may also contribute, which “might lead to poor or inconsistent supervision and enforcement of safety-related rules,” he says.
Once they’re older, the difference in injury rate between children shrinks. Schwebel says this is perhaps because older children begin making their own decisions about how to act, “Therefore, parents matter a little less,” he says. “Particular, inadequate supervision by a depressed mother might not influence the child’s safety as much as it does during the toddler years.”
