Maternal Mental Health and Early Childhood Development in Conflict-Affected Settings

• In Event: Early childhood adversity

Abstract

One out of every five children under 5 years of age are at risk of not fulfilling their development potential because of their exposure to armed conflict and forced displacement. In this paper, we report the results from a randomized trial of a community-based psychosocial program that promotes maternal mental health as an outcome and as a pathway to foster the nurturing child-mother relationships that can protect young children from the effects of conflict and forced displacement. We implemented the program in Tumaco a municipality in Colombia torn by ongoing conflict and randomized access to the program across Childcare Centers that serve vulnerable families, the majority of whom have been directly experienced violence or have been forcefully displaced by conflict. At the 8-month follow-up, we find positive effects of 0.15 standard deviations (sd) on a maternal mental health index; 0.23 sd on an index of child-mother interactions; 0.17 sd on early childhood mental health; and of 0.21 sd on a early-childhood development index. Our findings speak to the need and feasibility of implementing psychosocial programs in fragile and conflict affected settings.

Authors

• Arturo Harker Roa, Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes)
  Presenting Author

• Alicia Lieberman

• Andres Moya, Universidad de los Andes School of Economics

• Vilma Reyes, University of California, San Francisco

• Blasina Niño

• Mria Jose Torres

• Juliana Sanchez, Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes)