Young mothers can face a great deal of adversity both before and after becoming a parent, yet next-to-nothing has been known about the rates and types of significant mental health problems among these women in our community,” Dr. Ryan Van Lieshout, a psychiatrist and Canada Research Chair in the Perinatal Programming of Mental Disorders said in a statement.
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Previous studies have shown that pregnancy and parenting as a teen can lead to “a range of adverse outcomes for young mothers, including mental health problems such as depression, substance abuse, and PTSD” and they
However, researchers note that it’s not entirely clear whether the mental health problems these teens deal with are caused by the stress of early childbearing or whether the issues reported by young mothers are more connected to the intersecting adversity (class, race, culture, etc.)
Now that we understand that young mothers can struggle with problems other than just postpartum depression, our findings can be used to develop better screening processes, more effectively detect mental health problems in teenaged mothers, and direct treatment,” says Dr. Van Lieshout.
