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.
Child psychopathology
In studies of child in two age groups of pregnancy to five years, and fifteen years and twenty years, Raposa and colleagues (2011) studied the impact of psychopathology in the child-maternal relationship and how not only the mothers stress affected the child, but the child's stress affected the mother. Historically, it was believed that mothers who suffered from post partum depression might be the reason their child suffers from mental disorders both earlier and later in development. However this correlation was found to not only reflect maternal depression on child psychopathology, but also child psychopathology could reflect on maternal depression.