Neonatal behavior of babies exposed to maternal depressive and anxiety disorders during perinatal period

Perinatal depression and perinatal anxiety can affect up to 20% of women during pregnancy and postpartum. Babies exposed to these pathologies suffer consequences in their development at a cognitive, motor, emotional and social level. Some of these can be observed since birth. In addition, adverse effects have been described in the behavior of the newborn exposed to psychopharmacotherapy during pregnancy. The aims of the study were to observe the neonatal behavior of babies exposed to perinatal depression or anxiety and to compare it between both diagnostic groups of mothers. The cohort included 86 newborns, from 2 to 67 days of chronological age (29 ± 13.4, 48% females), exposed to maternal depression (n = 27) or anxiety (n = 59). The Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale, 4th edition, (Brazelton and Nugent, 2011) was administered at a maternal mental health unit to register the neonatal behavior. Chi-square and Student t-test analyses were calculated to compare item scores and percentages of suboptimal responses between both groups; Pearson correlations were calculated to analyze the relation of obstetric and psychiatric variables of mothers and the behavior of newborns. Significant differences between groups were found only regarding the change in skin color, with higher percentages of suboptimal responses in the group exposed to anxiety than to depression (24% versus 4%, Chi2 = 3.89; p < .05). Correlation analyses show that, although the birth weight is positively related to the interactive social orientation (tracing face and voice: r = .28, p = .02), the last was affected negatively by the dose of antidepressants during the third trimester of pregnancy (tracing face and voice: r = -.31, p = 0.03), indicating that higher doses of antidepressant was related with lower interactive social orientation. Our findings emphasize the need to detect depression and anxiety in women during the perinatal period in order to intervene at a multidisciplinary level in both, mother and baby, and the relation.