Smaller Baby Girls at Risk for Depression

Ivanhoe Newswire
Tuesday, March 6, 2007; 12:00 AM

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Girls who weigh less than about 5.5 pounds at birth may be at significant risk for depression in their teenage years.

Duke University researchers who followed nearly 1,500 girls and boys from 9 years old through 16 found nearly 40 percent of girls with low birth weights were affected by depression at some point between ages 13 and 16. That compares to just more than 8 percent of girls who were born with higher birth weights.

No increase in depression was found for boys -- about 5 percent of boys in both the low birth weight and normal birth weight groups ended up with depression. Other psychiatric disorders were similar in both girls and boys, including anxiety disorders.

Why would low birth weight girls be more susceptible to depression in their teens? The authors believe a complicated interplay of hormones and psychology may be responsible and call for more study to tease out the causes. In the meantime, they say parents and doctors should be more vigilant in looking for signs of depression in girls who were born weighing less than 5.5 pounds.

"For the present, the findings suggest that pediatricians and parents of girls who were of low birth weight should pay close attention to their mental health as they enter puberty," they write.

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SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, 2007;64:338-344