Depression and Thoughts of Death Among Disadvantaged Mothers: Risk Factors and Impact on Maternal and Child Health

Abstract

Our hypothesess were that modifiable societal risk factors would contribute to depression and thoughts of death (DTD) and that DTD would affect maternal and infant well-being. Retrospective database analysis with bivariate and multivariate statistics utilizing 3 years of data from the prospective Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Eight hundred and eighty mothers (18%) were clinically depressed; of these, 286 (33%) reported thoughts of death. DTD were significantly associated with family violence and alcohol use; a combination of DTD with family violence or maternal alcohol use markedly increased the risk of infant hospitalization (p-value <0.001). The association of DTD with problems of violence, substance abuse, and health outcomes underscores the complex relationships among these risk factors. Routine screening for these issues should be implemented.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• depression
• faily violence
• injury
• suicide
• violence

These data were presented at the sixty-seventh annual meeting of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, September 2008, Maui, HI.

The corresponding author had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.