Global Health
Maternal Mental health and cognitive abilities in children of the MAASTHI cohort in urban India Giridhara Rathnaiah Babu* Giridhara Rathnaiah Babu Deepa R Debarati Mukherjee
Introduction: Over 65 million children in India are at risk of suboptimal development due to various adversities. Within the MAASTHI cohort, we aimed to delineate the relationship between maternal mental health and cognitive abilities and the mental health of children.
Method: We extended the follow-up of the MAASTHI cohort in Bengaluru; N = 640; Age = 3-7 years. Literacy and numeracy were tested using the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) tool using flipbooks for stimuli presentation. We administered a Strength and Difficulty questionnaire (SDQ) to parents. The mother’s mental health was assessed using the Edinburgh Postnatal depression scale.
Results: The mean age of children is 5.09 ±0.24 years, with 327(51.1%) males and 313(48.9%) females. ASER tool was administered among children aged over 4 years (N=572); 442(77%) of these children attended private school and 124(21%) attended government school. We found that 54% of children could read letters,16% read words and 13% could read a paragraph. On the mathematical portion of the test, 57% recognized single digit, 30% recognized double digit, 18% could add and 12% could subtract single-digit numbers. The mean SDQ scorings were, for emotional symptoms (2.5±1.88, 0-10), conduct disorders (3±1.77, 0-9), hyperactivity (4±2.13, 0-10), peer problems (2±1.5, 0-8), prosocial scale (9±1.84, 0-10) and the total difficulty scores were (11±4.61, 1-33). Maternal mental health, as indicated by EPDS score is associated with child SDQ Score (β=0.171, 95% CI (0.08, 0.21), P-0.00).
Conclusion: In the five scales of SDQ, children scored the highest in the pro-social scale reflecting a strong capacity for positive social interaction in this age group. ASER results suggest that a considerable proportion of the surveyed children have some foundational skills in literacy and mathematics. Mother’s mental health status had a significant impact on child’s mental health in the MAASTHI cohort.