Maternal mental health and child problem behaviours: disentangling the role of depression and borderline personality dysfunction

Background It is not known whether associations between child problem behaviours and maternal depression can be accounted for by comorbid borderline personality disorder (BPD) dysfunction. Aim To examine the contributions of maternal depression and BPD symptoms to child problem behaviours. Method Depression trajectories over the first-year postpartum were generated using repeated measurement from a general population sample of 997 mothers recruited in pregnancy. In a stratified subsample of 251, maternal depression and BPD symptoms were examined as predictors of child problem behaviours at 2.5 years. Results Child problem behaviours were predicted by a high maternal depression trajectory prior to the inclusion of BPD symptoms. This association was no longer significant after the introduction of BPD symptoms. Conclusions Risks for child problem behaviours currently attributed to maternal depression may arise from more persistent and pervasive difficulties found in borderline personality dysfunction. Declaration of interest None. Copyright and usage © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017, this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.