Childhood behavioral inhibition and maternal symptoms of depression.

Background: The significance of behavioral inhibition in the second year of life for the development of social phobia in later childhood was the incentive to explore whether maternal postnatal psychopathology is a predictor for behavioral inhibition in the offspring.

Method: 101 mother-infant pairs were recruited from local obstetric units and examined for maternal psychopathology by the Symptom Checklist and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale several times during the first postnatal year. Child behavioral inhibition was assessed at 14 months in a laboratory procedure.

Results: Postpartum depression at 4 months measured by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale was found to be strongly associated with toddlers' fear score/behavioral inhibition at 14 months. Maternal depressive symptoms assessed by the revised 90-item Symptom Checklist at 6 weeks , 4 and 14 months were found to be related to child inhibition as well.

Conclusions: Even maternal depression not reaching the level of clinical diagnosis and treatment has an impact on child behavioral development. These data should give rise to further studies on the origins of this relationship, which might be primarily genetic or interactional.