Mothers Communicate Mental Status to Fetuses

Who would have thought that mothers can pass over their mental health status to their fetuses? In a new study, experts at the University of California in Irvine (UCI) found that depressed would-be mothers can pass information about their mental health to the fetus through chemical signals.

The placenta – the tissue that has already been proven to play the determining role in connecting mothers to their children – is apparently also capable of sending this particular type of data, PsychCentral reports.

What is important about this research is the fact that it demonstrates yet another factor that influences the overall development of the fetus. The intra-uterine environment is known to affect how a child grows, but no one suspected that even mother's mental health status plays a role in this.

“Now, the cynical interpretation of our results would be that if a mother is depressed before birth, you should leave her that way for the well-being of the infant. A more reasonable approach would be to treat women who present with prenatal depression. We know how to deal with depression,” UCI expert Curt A. Sandman says.