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Renin Paul
The 2007 March issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, carries a report that baby girls who weigh in at less than 2.5 kg at the time of birth are more prone to depression in their teenage years, from thirteen to sixteen, than other girls born with a normal weight. This finding does not apply to boys.
The article also states that earlier studies have found links between adolescent or adulthood depression and low birth weight.
It suggests that the possibility of depression may be quiescent in individuals born with low birth weight and may reveal itself when the individual encounters a stressful condition later on. The authors have stated that these previous studies however had not taken the differences in rates of depression dependent upon age and sex into consideration.
Previous research has also linked low birth weight to an amplified risk of attention deficit disorder, and/or physical conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
In the 1993 Great Smoky Mountains Study, Elizabeth Jane Costello, Ph.D from N.C's Duke University Medical School, and her team studied 1,420 children from 11 North Carolina counties. They were thereafter assessed annually for depression and other psychiatric disorders from childhood (age 9 to 12) through their adolescence (age 13 to 16 years).
The researchers were looking for the connection between depression and low birth weight. Of these children, 49 percent were girls. Information regarding the children's birth weight and other pointers such as the mother's unusual youth or parents being high school dropouts were collected from the children's mothers.
Of the girl participants, 5.7 of them weighed less than 2.5 kg at birth. From among this 5.7%, incidents of depression had occurred in 38.1% when they were between thirteen and sixteen years of age.
In comparison, only 8.4% of children born with a normal weight experienced depression at this stage of their lives. This worked out to 23.5% of underweight baby girls experiencing depression as teenagers. Additionally, only 4.9% of boys in similar situations, irrespective of birth weight, experienced depression. Under average birth weight however was not linked to a raised risk of other psychiatric situations in children of either sex.
The researchers' theorized that the link to depression lay in the fact that compelling a foetus to make changes to compensate for inhospitable situations in the womb may somehow leave it unqualified to deal with harsh conditions it may encounter later on in life.
They also considered the possibility of low birth weight being indicative of unkind living conditions, such as poverty. A child facing them will more often than not be depressed.
Besides, a mother going through depression herself may more possibly have a child susceptible to experiencing depression - and may also have an underweight baby because she may possibly smoke and drink during pregnancy.
However, there was no evidence to substantiate this in the latest study.
The authors concluded their report with the suggestion that more extensive tests covering the subjects from the time of birth to adulthood were necessary. But they were satisfied that for the time being the findings insinuate that parents of underweight baby girls and their doctors should monitor the children's mental health as they enter the teen years.
The National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the William T. Grant Foundation funded the study.
