Healthcare in Pakistan
Depression often starts at young age and affects women more commonly than men. One or two mothers out of 10 have depression after childbirth. Depression also limits a mother’s capacity to care for her child, and can seriously affect the child’s growth and development. A study showed that exposure to maternal mental distress is associated with undernutrition in 9‐month infants in urban Pakistan.
Childhood trauma
In 2006, a study was published explaining that The effect of maternal PTSD symptoms related to cortisol has been shown to be associated with infant cortisol levels as early as the first year of life, and may be associated with in utero effects of maternal stress Indeed. infants of mothers who developed PTSD in response to direct exposure to the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks showed decreased salivary cortisol levels early in life, compared to infants of WTC-exposed mothers who did not develop PTSD. This effect was most apparent in infants whose mothers were exposed during their third trimester of pregnancy. Their findings suggest that mothers with a greater susceptibility for developing PTSD may produce infants who are more easily distressed by novelty than are infants of mothers who are less prone to develop PTSD. Alternatively, mothers who more readily develop PTSD may perceive and then rate their infants as having generally negative temperaments. This was not the case, however, because these mothers only rated their infants as having greater distress to novelty but not as having other negative temperamental traits. The extent to which the behavioral changes in offspring persist is an important area for future inquiry (Brand, Engel, Canfield, and Yehuda, 2006).