IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v14y2017i11p1320-d117014.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Maternal Mental Health Disorders and Reports to Child Protective Services: A Birth Cohort Study

Author

Listed:
  • Ivy Hammond

    (Children’s Data Network, Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA)

  • Andrea Lane Eastman

    (Children’s Data Network, Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA)

  • John M. Leventhal

    (School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510, USA)

  • Emily Putnam-Hornstein

    (Children’s Data Network, Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
    California Child Welfare Indicators Project, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

Abstract

Background . Existing literature has documented a strong relationship between parental mental illness and child maltreatment, but little is known about the prevalence of mental illness among childbearing women. In the present study, linked administrative records were used to identify the prevalence of maternal mental health (MH) disorders documented at birth and determine the associated likelihood of maltreatment reports during infancy. Materials and Methods . Vital records for California’s 2006 birth cohort were linked to hospital discharge and Child Protective Services (CPS) records. The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) billing codes from the mother’s delivery hospitalization were used to determine diagnosed maternal MH disorders for 551,232 infants born in 2006, and reports of alleged maltreatment were documented from CPS records. Vital birth records were used to control for sociodemographic factors. Finally, the associated risk of reported maltreatment during the first year of life was examined using generalized linear models. Results . Among infants in this statewide birth cohort, 2.8% were born to a mother with a documented MH disorder, of which 41.3% had documented maternal substance abuse issues versus less than 0.5% of infants born to mothers without a diagnosed MH disorder. Further, 34.6% of infants born to mothers with a MH disorder were reported to CPS within one year, and a majority of those reports were made within the first month of life (77.2%). In contrast, among children born to mothers without a MH disorder, 4.4% were reported to CPS during infancy. After controlling for sociodemographic factors, the rate of CPS reports during infancy for infants born to mothers with a MH disorder but no substance use disorder was 2.6 times that of infants born to mothers without a MH disorder (95% CI = 2.47, 2.73). Among infants born to mothers with MH and substance use disorders, the rate of CPS reports during infancy was 5.69 times that of infants born to mothers without a MH disorder (95% CI = 5.51, 5.87). Conclusions . Administrative records provide a method for identifying infants born to mothers with MH disorders, enabling researchers to track rates over time and generate population-level data to inform policy development and improve service delivery.

Suggested Citation

  • Ivy Hammond & Andrea Lane Eastman & John M. Leventhal & Emily Putnam-Hornstein, 2017. "Maternal Mental Health Disorders and Reports to Child Protective Services: A Birth Cohort Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-12, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:11:p:1320-:d:117014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/11/1320/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/11/1320/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. LaLiberte, Traci & Piescher, Kristine & Mickelson, Nicole & Hwa Lee, Mi, 2024. "The overrepresentation of parents with disabilities in child protection," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    2. Kohl, Patricia L. & Dunnigan, Allison & Markovitz, Lara & Feely, Megan & Lewis, Ericka M. & Seay, Kristen D. & Lanier, Paul & Fedoravicius, Nicole & Auslander, Wendy & Guo, Shenyang & Jonson-Reid, Mel, 2023. "Improving child behavior through parent training in child welfare services: A mixed-methods study of families receiving in-home services," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:11:p:1320-:d:117014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.