Authors: Ellen Johnson Silver Amy M Heneghan Laurie J Bauman Ruth E K Stein
Publish Date: 2005/12/28
Volume: 10, Issue: 1, Pages: 105-112
Abstract
Objective Despite the high prevalence of maternal depression and its negative consequences for children many pediatricians fail to identify this problem Our goal was to determine whether simple questions about parenting competence and the adequacy of maternal social support might be useful to providers in determining which innercity mothers are likely to be depressed Methods We surveyed a convenience sample of 279 Englishspeaking mothers of children 6 months to 3 years old prior to a routine visit at an urban hospitalbased general pediatrics clinic The mothers selfcompleted the Psychiatric Symptom Index PSI and the Parenting Stress Index Sense of Competence subscale and rated the adequacy of their social support and provided health and sociodemographic data by facetoface interview Results 41 of mothers had “high” PSI symptom levels and 22 had scores above a criterion that suggests major depressive disorder In addition 15 experienced high parenting stress low competence and 42 reported little or no social support High distress was unrelated to a variety of sociodemographic risk factors but significantly associated with a poor sense of parenting competence Adj OR = 33 95 CI = 15 70 and inadequate perceived social support Adj OR = 23 95 CI = 12 44 as well as with having healthrelated activity limitations Adj OR = 32 95 CI = 11 90 Conclusions Negative ratings of parenting competence low perceived social support and presence of healthrelated activity restrictions can be useful markers of likely depression among innercity mothers of young children These factors are often assessed during routine pediatric visits and may be helpful to pediatricians in identifying mothers needing further evaluation or treatment by mental health specialistsPortions of this paper were presented at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association New Orleans LA May 4 1998 We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and Jacobi Medical Center We also thank students from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Health Research Training Program of the New York City Department of Health for their assistance in data collection Lauren E Westbrook PhD for contributing to earlier work that led to this investigation and the participating families for their help
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