Maternal Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression and Child Nocturnal Awakenings at 6 and 18 Months

Abstract

Objective: We aim to estimate the pathways between maternal symptoms of anxiety and depression and child nocturnal awakenings via structural equation modeling using a sibling design.

Methods: Structural equation modeling on data from 14,926 sibling dyads or triads from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study.

Results: At 6 months, we estimated the association between maternal symptoms of anxiety and child nocturnal awakenings to be owing to several nonsignificant pathways. Child nocturnal awakenings at 18 months, however, were influenced by concurrent maternal symptoms of anxiety (β = .10) and depression (β = .12). Neither maternal symptoms of anxiety (β = .04) nor depression (β = -.00) was influenced by concurrent child nocturnal awakenings.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that maternal mental health influences child sleep behavior at 18 months after birth, and not vice versa. This is in support of hypotheses on maternal mental health influencing child sleep during toddlerhood.

Keywords: anxiety; depression; epidemiology; siblings; sleep.