In the article ‘Ante-partum and postpartum exposure to maternal depression: different effects on different adolescent outcomes,’ published by Hay et al, generally aimed at exploring and addressing the problem of depression among the members of the community. The researchers engaged in the research work on this particular study topic by approaching it on the basis of maternal behavior and circumstances, as they connect to depressive conditions in their own lives and the life of every other person in the community. Depending on the revealed information, it appears that, these researchers employed a unique approach strategy that targeted addressing of the maternal depressive problems through the focusing on intrinsic environments of the child’s mother, that is, the intrauterine environment. Worthy noting is that the research approach is a broad one that integrated diverse interrelated concepts of depressive conditions that are contributing factors to healthy development of the early developmental stages that begins from the foetal developmental stage through adolescent to adulthood stage (Butler, 2000).
Evidences from different research sources have shown that depression is among the top ten leading health problems that the global community is grappling with for an everlasting solution. The article emphasizes that depression is a common disorder repeatedly reported and non-reported to healthcare centers. There are reports which show that, depression is a most common psychological condition in the world by indicating an estimated lifetime prevalence of about 16 % of the adult populations. Out of the total world population, it is also indicated that about 12 % of the depressed persons are men, while around 25 % are depressed women found in the western countries (Campbell et al, 1992).
The comparison of these values indicates depressed women are twice as many as the number of depressed men. Such results implication is that, women are at higher risks of getting depressed than men. This discrepancy may be accounted for in a number of ways, of which traumatic conditions during pregnancy and then after giving birth are some of the suggested contributing factors. The depressing conditions are also linked to child developmental behavior and abilities. Furthermore, other data and information that bring worry to the world’s population is that, at any given time of carrying a single survey, 10 % to 22 % of individuals in the population portray symptoms and signs of depression (Butler, 2000).
Statistical data from different organizations show that young people are not safe from depressive conditions. A research carried out at the University of Michigan depicted that juveniles and young people are at high risks, and most of them suffer from severe depressions. They argued and consented that depression among the young persons becomes more pronounce with increasing maturity age. According to the research, about 5% of the teenager population experience depressing problems which is evidenced through numerous emotional feelings of the body. However, they noted that prevalence among the juvenile is likely to be increased in a population of children suffering from mental retardations condition and developmental disorders. This was in line with the arousal cause for the authors whom embarked on studying the above research topic. In fact, it connected the concept of depression to development as it was applied in the study of the present work. Therefore, results that have been produced by the several other organizations and individuals based on depression appears to be in agreement with what triggered researchers of the current report to carrying out this research work (Butler, 2000).
Hay et al (2008) stated that maternal postpartum depression condition has the potential of putting infants at higher risk. This is true to the best of knowledge gained from many psychological studies which shows that a depressed mother would provide a negative environment that affects the moods and feelings of the child. The provision of any kind of environment to the child determines the child’s mental conditions at any given time. That is to say, if the child is provided with a good environment for development, the conditions necessary to contribution of the development of depressive conditions are cleared or eliminated. Otherwise, the change from good to bad or worse environmental conditions, whether internally or externally, would have the potential of affecting the child’s mental health negatively, and hence result into depressive conditions in the child, as it occurs with depression in adults. This shows that there is high probability of mothers contributing to development of depressive conditions among children. The statement is well affirmed by the numbers or percentages which are indicated in the different research results of previously completed works of other investigators.
When the environment conditions change from good to worse, the child has the ability to change with the treat given by the mother and then behave certainly as dictated by the environment. As revealed, some mothers develop negative attitudes towards the child relationship and association that may be found among many of them. Actually, the depressed mother responds towards her depressed conditions by denying the child some of the necessary and basic needs. For instance, most of the mothers respond towards their children under depressed condition by not taking up enough food; hence, they feel uneasy or not attracted to breastfeeding the child. Under such a condition, the infants do not get enough food from their mothers, even when the mothers are willing to breastfeed their beloved children. This contributes to the small percentage of children whom are likely to developed mental problem of stress. The final results and effects of this phenomenon is that there would be an increasing trend of the number of infants falling victims of depressed situation.
Moreover, Hay et al points out that depressed women are emotionally irritated towards their children, hence the pay no much attention to the infants signals. It is also noted that depressed mothers fail to offer the own children the basic needs. This is likely to happen during the postpartum period more than during ante-partum period. Many children whose mothers are depressed are at higher risk, because their mothers keep on concentrating with other things less concerned with nurturing of the child. Through this way of failing to attend wholly to the necessities of the child, the mothers undoubtedly establishes direct and indirect punitive environment of the child, capable of making the young baby to develop feeling of being stressed. What this means is that, the number of children keeps on increasing with each experiencing more or less same kind of painful environments.
Well, it has been determined that children would grow and develop in almost same way all throughout the entire range of depressed mothers except for those happy mums. The point drawn from this statement or discourse is, infants of depressed mothers do live on the same type of nutritional sources as well as experiences almost equal maternal love extension and attractions. This may be supported from the fact that infants are generally and instinctively considered to have tender bodies, which is only build and established through feeding on the milk profuse stuffs. Furthermore, the pediatrics holds that a new born baby has to live on mother’s milk for at least half a year before it graduates/ gets weaned. While the article tries to adhere and reveal pertinent important pediatric information of nutritional values of milk to the baby, the child’s tender body acts a means of protection, as the maternal parents are prevented from acting in anger/fury against the infants. Due to this inherent control of the environment that exists between children and their maternal parents, the prevalence of depressive situations among infants is kept fairly low and almost at constant level (Campbell et al, 1992).
To add on this, there is no identified study that has shown whether there is any gender disparity between male and female babies, but there has been some arguments supporting the above ideas that there are no differences on the attribute of depression shown by boys and girls. Though it established that during childhood there is stability in the number of infants whom would get depressed, the rate would change as the individuals grows up. It can be recognized that the same population of children at childhood would have increased when the same population clears the first decade and enters the adolescent age. The trend of increased depression rate among young person is released in all the two cohorts of depressed and that of happy mothers. While many sociologists had a good explanation of the role played by milk in reducing depression among the young people, it becomes very hard to explain the point of increased depression for the children who had received the correct and right attention from their maternal parent at their early ages of childhood. Despite the limited sociological ability to explain certain behavior of childhood development, certain negative attributes during pregnancy have been linked to child’s behavior and emotion. However, the behavior transition from the tender age years of childhood to adolescence age is unique by itself. As mentioned early, a shift of the number of depressed individuals is always common in all population of different generations (Campbell et al, 1992).
Like in other research work, Hay et al (2008) recognizes that this abnormal shift as not connected totally to the child-maternal parent associations. However, the authors of the article fail to establish an acceptable explanation for it. Noted in other studies was that, the both depressive conditions were more pronounced on female cohorts than it was with the male cohorts. Acknowledging of this number value shifts together with the gender disparities of the depressed persons, we can assume a new dimension on the matter. The most appropriate way to describe these changes is engulfed within the genetic and hormonal domains. According to many researches that have been carried out in relation to adolescence depression, they have established that boy-girl child behaviors are greatly affected by the individuals genetic make up, and these two cannot be isolated when it comes tom the description of adolescents behaviors. The thinking however has partial answers to the existing situation in sense that, researchers have been unavailable determine the contributing factor of each. While the idea of increased distractive behavior and emotional disorder, they both appear to be augmented among the males and female groups at the age of adolescent. Like any other research works that have been previously carried out, hormonal activities seems to be dominant during this period and the behavior controls perhaps is no longer determined through child-maternal parent relationships. while many psychologists still hold the idea on behavior changes determined by the early childhood habits, physiologists attributes the disparity of male to female depression to the hormonal activities which they believe are able of bring certain changes in the body (Hay, 2007).
The article contradicts with most of the research methods that have been employed in the determination of the existence of stress developed. While there are well documented ways of measuring and establishing the impacts of different parameters in a study, the persistence of depressive conditions from one generation to another must have been due to poor utilizations of methods for data collection to be employed in evaluating and deciding its impact as causal factor to depression. For instance, the use of longitudinal sample is not an applicable method for establishing IQ problems for duration of time. This is because longitudinal studies are performed for studies that are carried once and within a short period of time. Halligan et al say that they used in the ancient time the longitudinal sampling technique to determine problems within the sensor- motor intelligence of infants. This detection technique could not be the most appropriate one testing for the intelligence quotient for young people. It raises a lot of questions based on the time difference. One of the reasons why this early method might not have been the most suitable one is because the infant’s sensory organs are always growing and developing. In that case, it means that the constant state of environment needed for the use of longitudinal technique is affected and the comparison of sensor-motor cannot be comparable parameter with intelligence quotient for individual at different age (Hay, 2007).
Another commonly used method that has been employed in the study of depression in the early studies is the observational way. This is a technique which has been expressed to be suited for studies in which physical items are being investigated. In the actual sense, there are most wonders on its applications in the studies of depressive conditions within the community. Campbell et al say that they utilized it in their study to establish the responsiveness of a two group cohorts, one for well women and another one for depressed, whereby the results showed that depressed women had higher rate emotional disorder by responding the least to their child’s signal. In comparison to the current methods of diagnosis used by Hay et al (2008) the deprivation score method was more advance in the sense that it could be employed to obtain data which could not be collected through the ancient methods of observation. The use of deprivation score technique in the current article could address and resolve a major problem posed on the earlier ancient techniques, hence, the researchers were able to access data and information that was intrinsically found.
According to this article, it provides a major way of intervention method to combat the current menace of depression which is affecting numerous individuals, particularly young people. The key target of enable a better implementation strategy is through the maternal parents. It demands the calming down of the child‘s mother during perinatal and postpartum periods, as mother are the initial cause of depressive conditions to all young ones. However, the father’s roles cannot be undermined in any way, especially in calming down the depressed mothers. The use of this strategy is of key importance in the struggle of creating a community free from depressive condition. Unlike the current intervention and treatment method of psychotherapy and use of chemically manufactured product or drugs, that is antidepressants, the method has special benefits and advantages over the other two, since it can be used in a proactive way rather than in a reactive manner to handle and contain depression problem at all demographic levels. For that reason, I believe that this article has major impacts in the nursing and medical fields.
References
Butler, S., (2000). Maternal depressive symptoms affect infant cognitive development in Barbados. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41, 747–57
Campbell, B., Cohn, F., Flanagan, C., Popper, S., and Meyers, T., (1992). Course and Correlates of Postpartum Depression during the Transition to Parenthood. Development and Psychopathology, 4, 29–47.
Hay, D., (2007). The gradual emergence of sex differences in aggression: Alternative explanations. Psychological Medicine, 37, 1527–37.
Hay, D., Pawlby, S., Sharp, D. and Waters, C. (2008). Ante-partum and postpartum exposure to maternal depression: different effects on different adolescent outcomes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49 (10), 1079–88