The Impact of Maternal Psychiatric Illness on Infant Development

Maternal depression and anxiety are associated with compromises in infant and maternal socialand emotional functioning. In this paper, we briefly review the literature on this topic and presentsome preliminary findings on a group of mothers in treatment for major depressive disorder, panicdisorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. The findings suggest that the symptom reports of treatedmothers with established DSM diagnoses were similar overall to those of control mothers. However,the mothers’ psychiatric illness had a compromising effect on their interactions with their infants andon their infants’ social and emotional functioning. The implications of these results are discussed.