Depressed Mothers

Maternal depression (i.e., major depressive disorder) affects 1 out of 10 mothers across the United States (Ertel, Rich-Edwards, & Koenen, 2011). These mothers can demonstrate little responsiveness to their child and low levels of expression of positive affect and (Reck et al., 2004). Depression in mothers can affect children through social withdrawal and parenting behaviors aimed at their children that can affect their social cognition skills (Field, 1989; Cummings & Davies, 1994). Depressed mothers tend to show an increased use of negative or flat emotions towards their children than mothers without depression (Campbell, Cohn, & Meyers, 1995). Through this increased use of negative and flat affect, these children are less likely to rely on the facial expressions of their mothers for information about her emotional state (Hoffner & Badzinski, 1989). Furthermore, children of depressed mothers are an increased risk for developing depression and other internalizing behavior problems later in their life (Joormann, Gilbert & Gotlib, 2010). In order to increase our understanding of the pathways from a child of a depressed mother to a depressed adolescent or young adult, we need to identify if maternal depression affects specific social cognitive processes of their …show more content…
We will investigate these families annually across four years. We will recruit participants from the community through ads, flyers posted in the community, and through schools in the local area. We expect our mother-child dyads to be ethnically and economically diverse respective to the population of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Mothers will be compensated $25 on their first visit, $30 on their second, and $35 on their last visit. We will offer a prize and a snack to the children in our study after each of the four visits to our