Depression: its trajectory and correlates in mothers rearing children with intellectual disability.
Mom depression in ID families fades to low levels over a decade, and personality predicts it more than the child’s diagnosis.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team followed the mothers for 11 years. Half had adopted kids with ID. Half gave birth to kids with ID.
Every few years moms filled out a mood and personality form. The goal: see if depression stayed high or eased over time.
What they found
At year 11 both groups showed the same low depression scores. Birth moms did not feel worse than adoptive moms.
The only big predictor was mom’s own “neuroticism” score. Child behavior and surprise of the diagnosis did not matter.
How this fits with other research
Scior et al. (2023) found the opposite direction: child sleep problems later raised mom’s distress. Together the studies show mom mood can start high then drop (M et al.) or start low then rise (K et al.). Both remind you to watch mom and child together.
Schertz et al. (2016) tracked teens and adults with Williams syndrome and saw their daily-living scores fall even while IQ stayed flat. M et al. shows moms adapt even when child skills stay flat or drop, so parent coping and child progress do not always move in step.
Schaaf et al. (2015) report that many high-functioning clients lost the ASD label under DSM-5. M et al. sampled before that shift, so today some of those kids might not carry the ID label either. The low mom distress finding still holds, but the mix of kids in your caseload may change.
Why it matters
You can reassure new parents: most moms feel better by year 11. Screen for mom traits like neuroticism early, not just child behavior. Low mood at intake does not mean chronic distress, so keep parent support in the plan but don’t assume lifelong crisis.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Rearing a child with an intellectual disability (ID) is a lifelong activity, and research needs to reflect the extended nature of the task as well as its complexity. The present longitudinal study reports on an 11-year follow-up of adoptive and birth families rearing children with ID. Its focus was on depressive symptoms and how these changed over time in a sample of 187 mothers. In particular, the authors were interested in whether initial differences in depression between adoptive mothers who knowingly and willingly decided to rear their children with disabilities, and birth mothers for whom the diagnosis of disability was unexpected and frequently crisis-inducing, would persist over time. METHODS: A longitudinal method with three times of measurement provided data which were analysed with analysis of variance and regression techniques. Moreover, several other individual and family adjustment measures were examined with respect to their correlations with depression and an outcome variable that measured subjective well-being with regard to the child. Furthermore, mothers were classified as typical or atypical for their adoptive/birth group based on their depression scores at the first time of measurement. The authors predicted that later depression would be different based on the earlier scores. RESULTS: Both adoptive and birth mothers reported low depression, not significantly different from each other, at the 11-year follow-up. The personality variable of neuroticism was the strongest predictor of depression for both adoptive and birth mothers, accounting for 24% and 23% of the variance, respectively, but it did not predict the mother's subjective well-being with regard to the child. Mothers classified as typical or atypical for their groups at initial measurement continued to report significantly different depression scores 11 years later. CONCLUSIONS: The low depression scores, not significantly different for birth and adoptive mothers, portray the long-term prognosis for adjustment to rearing children with disabilities as primarily positive. Moreover, the predictive value of neuroticism suggests that general mental health is an important component influencing this adjustment. Nevertheless, a different pattern for a different outcome variable suggests that multiple measures are necessary to portray accurately the complexity of reaction over time.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2003 · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2788.2003.00487.x