Maternal Mental Health Declines Sharply Over 8 Years

TOPLINE:

Self-reported mental health deemed “excellent” declined from 38.4% to 25.8% between 2016 and 2023 in mothers in the United States, while “fair/poor” mental health increased from 5.5% to 8.5%. Physical health changes were less dramatic, with reports of “excellent” physical health decreasing from 28.0% to 23.9%.

METHODOLOGY:

• A pooled, cross-sectional analysis of the National Survey of Children’s Health examined self-reported mental and physical health of 198,417 female biological or adoptive parents of children aged 0-17 years from 2016 to 2023.
• Researchers measured maternal physical and mental health using a four-point Likert scale (excellent, very good, good, fair/poor), with regression models estimating trends and sociodemographic disparities.
• Analysis included mothers with a mean age of 39.0 years (SD, 0.04), representing 42,130,370 individuals nationally in the weighted sample.

TAKEAWAY:

• After adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, excellent mental health decreased by 12.4 percentage points (95% CI, −14.0 to −0.7), while fair/poor mental health increased by 3.5 percentage points (95% CI, 2.6-4.4) over the 8-year period.
• Mental health declines occurred broadly across socioeconomic groups, with significantly poorer status among US-born mothers, single parents, less educated individuals, and those with publicly insured or uninsured children.
• Excellent physical health showed a smaller decline of 4.2 percentage points (95% CI, −5.7 to −2.8), with good physical health increasing by 4.4 percentage points (95% CI, 2.9-6.0).
• According to the researchers, shifts in mental and physical health originated prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, though the pandemic was associated with increased prevalence of fair/poor mental health.

IN PRACTICE:

“Investments are needed to investigate and address the underlying causes of mental health decline among US mothers, especially those of low socioeconomic status,” the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Jamie R. Daw, PhD, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. It was published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.

LIMITATIONS:

Health measures were limited to two single-item Likert response questions, which, while strong predictors of subsequent medical care and mortality, show known reporting heterogeneity across sociodemographic groups, particularly by sex and age. The researchers noted that low self-reported health ratings do not translate into clinically meaningful diagnoses and may have reflected more permanent aspects of health rather than acute conditions.

DISCLOSURES:

This study received support through a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01HS029159).

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.