Health - BEHIND THE SCENE: LOW BIRTH WEIGHT'S AT MAJOR RISK TO STRESS AND DEPRESSION

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Behind The Scene: Low Birth Weight At Major Risk To Stress And Depression

With the past few decades, Low Birth weight has been a topic of interest by many researchers in India as low birth weight is a major determinant of infant mortality. Infants weighing 2,500 gms (5.5 pounds) or less are almost 40 times more likely to die during their first 4 weeks of life than normal birth weight infant. In addition, low birth weight survivors are at increased risk of health problems.

Though health professionals have answered many questions but question related to “early life experience” has been still uncovered. The phrase” early influences” denotes the conditioning of behavior by the experiences of very early life. Early experiences, however, do more than conditioning behavioral patterns, they also affect profoundly and lastingly many biological characteristics of the adult.

The conditions in the womb do indeed have an affect on future development. People who had just mild or moderate symptoms of depression or anxiety over their life were smaller babies than those who had better mental health.It is a problem if born small in adverse condition in womb and low birth weight is considered as a marker of stress in the womb. When a mother is really stressed, blood flow to the uterus is restricted and the fetus gets fewer nutrients which tends to lead to Low birth weight, A the same time, because the mother is stressed, stress hormones pass through the placenta to fetus and may affect the fetus’s neurodevelopment, personality and stress response.

Some previous studies have suggested an association between low birth weight and later depression on psychological distress (Thompson et al. 2001., Gale and Martyn et al. 2004, Wiles et al. 2005), but contradictory finding have also been presented (Osler et al., 2005). Thompson et al. (2001) investigated the association between birth weight and depression in later life in the Hertforshire birth cohort study of 882 subjects at the age of 68 years. They found that among men there was an association between low birth weight and risk of depression measures by Geriatric Depression Scale while no association was found among women. Depue and Icaono (1989) proposed that major depression is characterized by deficits or dysfunctions in the behavioural activation system (behavioural facilitation system) and the behavioural inhibition system.

In support of this, a wide range of empirical evidence indicates that depressed individuals are characterized by low behaviour activation system (BAS) functioning and to a lesser extent by high behaviour inhibition system (BIS) functioning (Davidson et al., 1990; Henriques and Davidson, 1991) Birth weight and personality:

Several inverse associations between birth weight and incidence of cardiovascular diseases in adulthood (Barker 1994; Frankel et al 1996) suggest that development in early life may influence the risk of disease many years later. The observations corroborate the idea that the fetal environment explains some variance in behavioral dispositions. Personality in terms of birth weight may thus affect health as some personality traits may lead an individual prone to neuroticism, stress and depression thereby affecting physiological as well as psychological disturbances.

Thus the pregnant women should be better taken care as stress during pregnancy has potentially serious negative consequences on the future health of the fetus.

Author: Shikha Shukla is pursuing PhD  shuklashikha_82@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are strictly those of the writer and 123oye does not take any responsibility for them. Kindly consult a Doctor before following any advice.