Maternal prenatal depression and past trauma: Intergenerational effects on fetal neurobehavior and early childhood mental health

There is ample evidence that when a mother is distressed during pregnancy (e.g., depression, anxiety, stressful life events), this can lead to greater risk that her child will develop mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, and conduct problems. What remains unclear are the mechanisms or pathways through which maternal distress can transcend to the fetus to influence child development; a potential pathway is through the methylation of genes in the placenta. What also remains unclear is whether past maternal trauma can also influence child mental health outcomes, beyond exposure to maternal prenatal distress. The group that I will study are women and their children followed throughout pregnancy and childhood who are part of the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) consortium, a multi-site study of 62 cohorts across the United States under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My research will be part of the Boricua Youth Study, which includes a high-adversity sample of Puerto Rican women - these women have been followed from childhood to adulthood to the second generation of children, allowing for the study of how the mother's exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs, a well known measure of trauma) may affect the next generation. During my Fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Monk at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, my aim is to expand my training in perinatal development to include skills such as: the assessment of fetal neurobehavior in utero, the extraction DNA from biospecimens, procedural knowledge to conduct observational studies, the development of treatment interventions, and proficiency in translational research. Overall, I aim to gain new knowledge to underscore the need for preventative healthcare and to inform specific, time-sensitive interventions to improve the mental health of women and their children in the first years of life.