Adjustment of children of depressed mothers: a 10-month follow-up.

There is considerable concern about the adjustment of children of depressed mothers. Earlier we studied the specificity of these difficulties to maternal depression. Child adjustment difficulties were evident in 7- to 13-year-old children of both depressed and nondepressed psychiatric patient mothers but not in the children of community mothers or nondepressed medical patient mothers (Lee & Gotlib, 1989a). This report describes a 10-month follow-up of 44 of these subjects. Despite the alleviation of maternal depressive symptomatology, children in the 2 psychiatric groups continued to manifest adjustment difficulties that were evident to both clinicians and mothers. These findings suggest that the adjustment difficulties found in the children of psychologically distressed mothers do not abate within the 1st year after the mothers' recovery.