Effects of Maternal Depressive Symptomatology on Pregnancy Outcomes and Newborn Development --- How is Paternal Psychopathology Involved?

This study aims at investigating the effects of maternal depressive symptomatology on pregnancy outcomes and newborn development. How paternal psychopathology is involved in the association will also be explored.

This is a three-year prospective cohort study. Three versions of questionnaires (the mother, the father, and the infant) will be developed first. For parents, data on self-reported symptomatology such as depression, anxiety, and stress will be collected, while for infants, maternal report on newborn development will be measured. Then, two medical centers and two regional hospitals will be selected. All pregnant women who undergo a first-trimester prenatal visit, who plan to carry the baby till term, and whose spouse is also willing to participate will be invited to join the study. The investigators expect to recruit a total of 194 pairs of depressive mothers and her spouses and 278 pairs of non-depressive mothers and her spouses in the study.

After the informed consent is obtained, one baseline assessment (i.e., the first trimester) and four follow-up assessments (i.e., the second trimester, the third trimester, one month postnatal and six months postnatal) will be implemented. Basically, prenatal investigation (for both mothers and fathers) will be carried out at the outpatient prenatal visit. Postnatal investigation (for the mothers, fathers and infants) will be processed at the pediatric outpatient visit when the infants are schedule for an immunization injection. After data are collected, descriptive, analytic and longitudinal data analyses will be performed to investigate the association between parental psychopathology and pregnancy outcomes and newborn development.

This study will explore the effects of the developmental trajectories of parental psychopathology on newborn growth during the critical stage of pregnancy. It is hoped that evidence based data could be obtained, examined, and applied in future prevention-intervention program to promote parental and newborn health, both physically and psychologically.