Poster #58 - Maternal History of Childhood Maltreatment: Risk for Maternal Depression and Toddler Behavior Problems

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Childhood maltreatment is a significant risk factor for depression in adulthood (Kessler et al., 2010), which can have implications for the next generation. Maternal depression is associated with child internalizing and externalizing behavior, with stronger effects for children living in poverty (Goodman et al., 2011). Additional contextual stressors, including the number of children living in the home, can accentuate risk for depression (Michl et al., 2015). Children raised in low-income environments by mothers with histories of childhood maltreatment and depression face risks at multiple levels of the ecology, illustrating the developmental psychopathology framework (Cicchetti & Toth, 2016). Understanding these associations can inform the development of targeted interventions to prevent the adverse development of future generations.
Participants were 128 low-income urban mothers (18-39 years old, 59.4% African American), and their 26-month old children (51.2% female). Recruitment was part of a larger intervention trial (Toth et al., 2013). Only mothers in the non-intervention control condition (n = 73) and nondepressed mothers (n = 55) were included in this analyses to eliminate possible intervention effects. Maternal history of childhood maltreatment (MHCM) was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (Bernstein & Fink, 1998) to determine the number of subtypes of maltreatment experienced. When children were 12 months old, number of maternal depressive symptoms was assessed using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (Robins et al., 1995). Children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms at 26 months were assessed using maternal report on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000).
Analyses were performed using MPlus Version 7.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2018) with robust standard errors to handle non-normality. Structural equation modeling examined maternal depressive symptoms as a mediator between MHCM and child internalizing and externalizing behavior, controlling for number of children living in the home (see Figure 1). The model showed adequate fit to the data (χ2(2) = 8.53, p > .01; CFI = 0.95; SRMR = 0.063). Greater MHCM predicted greater depressive symptoms (β = 0.456, p < .001), and greater depressive symptoms predicted greater child internalizing (β = 0.246, p < .05) and externalizing (β = 0.292, p < .01) at 26 months. The PRODCLIN program (Tofighi & Mackinnon, 2011) determined maternal depression significantly mediated the association between MHCM and child internalizing (95% asymmetric CI [0.081, 0.78]) and externalizing behavior (95% asymmetric CI [0.26, 1.199]).
These results suggest that MHCM can impact the psychological development of children by putting mothers at risk for depression. Further, the association between MHCM and maternal depression holds above and beyond the stress caused by the number of children present in a mother’s home. These findings suggest that interventions with low-income mothers should address both depressive symptoms and maltreatment history to prevent the development of psychopathology in their children.

Authors

• Michelle Alto, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author

• Fred Rogosch, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dante Cicchetti, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sheree Toth, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author