The effects of maternal anxiety or stress during pregnancy on the fetus and the long term development of the child.

There is increasingly strong evidence from several independent large prospective studies that maternal stress/anxiety during pregnancy can affect fetal brain development, with adverse effects on the child’s emotional, behavioural and cognitive development. The relationship with the partner can be one important source of such stress, and cortisol may be one mediator. The magnitude of these effects on the child is very clinically significant.

These results suggest that it is important to both detect and treat affective disorder during pregnancy, both for the direct benefit to the mother herself, and to help reduce the later development of behavioural and other problems in children.